The Hero (2017)
At first blush, The Hero seems to be a story about aging in the spotlight: Hollywood-powered stardom meets end-of-life regret, and then second chances, redemption, and finding something more human beneath it all. We have watched similar fallen-star characters traverse this territory in compelling and humorous ways before: Michael Keaton in Birdman, Robert De Niro in The Comedian, or Lisa Kudrow in The Comeback, to name a few.
The main delight of The Hero is the amount of time we get to spend with Sam Elliott, who plays the main role as Lee Haydan, a Western film icon who shares more than few biographical details with Elliott. Throughout, there are winks and nods at our real-life Western icon’s roles in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Big Lebowski, and many more. When Lee explains early in the film, “Movies are other people's dreams,” there’s a beautiful tension in realizing Sam Elliott is also reminding the audience that the person we know him to be is just our dream of him. Underneath the fantasy is something darker, more complicated.
Lee Haydan’s story begins with a cancer diagnosis that causes him to reconsider his failed relationships with his daughter, ex-wife, best friend, agent, and others. This plot ostensibly drives the film, but ends up being about as clichéd as it sounds. What really stands out are the moments in between the predictable beats. The first moment that Lee decides to embrace the life he has left, he does so by attending a conspicuously cheesy lifetime achievement award ceremony in a nondescript hotel banquet room that’s half empty. Nostalgic, aging fans only want to talk about his first film role. In that setting, while also tripping on molly, he has a breakthrough during his acceptance speech: he calls up a random woman to the stage and presents her the award instead, starting up a chant: “Diane! Diane! Diane!”
Diane, who only appears in the film at this moment, smiles shyly at the crowd now applauding her lifetime achievements. It’s the moment we all sort of think we want: to be recognized, applauded, loved by strangers.
Lee Haydan realizes he’s had his fill of it. He’s grateful but hungry for something else.
Maybe that something else is the magical Charlotte Dylan (Laura Prepon), a woman at least thirty years his junior, who walks into his life and almost immediately wants to date him for reasons I won’t spoil. Maybe it’s to reignite his faith in his career by auditioning for a blockbuster sci-fi film. Maybe it’s just to reconcile with his daughter, Lucy (Krysten Ritter), though the nature of their estrangement remains unclear.
As Lee churns through solutions, he displays an astounding array of selfishness. He’s indulgent, sentimental, privileged, self-pitying, self-absorbed, angry, and totally unreliable. His relationship with Charlotte is almost entirely about his own insecurity about being 71, a fact that Charlotte pokes fun at just one time and which inexplicably requires her apology. His daughter makes good-faith efforts to engage with him, but he makes it clear that he’ll only engage on his terms and timeline. I mean, he literally springs the news of his cancer on his ex-wife during her big gallery opening. He doesn’t tell his best friend at all.
Lee is just not that great of a guy. But Sam Elliott, with great skill, somehow makes the man’s behavior captivating, sympathetic, and at times, charming. Who among us can’t identify with Lee’s foibles?
I think it would be too easy to call the story of Lee Haydan the tale of a star who finds redemption late in life. I question whether Lee is redeemed at all. But it is the story of a man who is learning—with baby steps—how to get out of the spotlight that he’s created for himself, treat himself more kindly, shrug off a larger-than-life mythos and become a part of a family. May we all be more like his friends and family, full of patience, while he’s learning.
—Reviewed by Tyler McCabe