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Summary: Better than therapy. Anti-yuppie joy. Great music and sights
Review: This movie is a quiet gem. I raved about it so much my brother and two friends bought me the video. I can watch it over and over and still find something new in it. My favorite scenes:Mac waltzing; the rolex watch washed away while Mac cleans sea shells; Marina's "great pair of lungs"; Mac offering to trade lives with Gordon; the punk girl chasing after Danny (who among us has not chased after the cute new guy/gal?); the dinner with "Trudy" (it had a name - two names). Happer leaving in his limo parked along "Happer Blvd." Happer firing his therapist. Watch it yourself and you'll find more. The soundtrack by Mark Knoppfler will soothe you, and the beautiful beach scenes will inspire you to call a travel agent to see it yourself. It's anti-yuppie joy because it shows the values that really matter - friends, family, a great pub where people will give you change for the phone. A great date movie ! This film is also recommended on a great website: GUMBOPAGES.COM, where you can learn about great food, music and other forms of relaxation. Enjoy - and check out the Matchmaker, which has a similar feel andlook to it.
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Summary: Home may not be where the heart and soul find rest
Review: Before the relative spate of British comedic films recently appearing on American screens - THE FULL MONTY, WAKING NED DEVINE, and SAVING GRACE - there was the 1983 release LOCAL HERO, a gentle fable of big city, corporate avarice meeting its match when pitted against rural backwater shrewdness. Peter Riegert is cast as MacIntyre, a young Houston exec of Knox Oil, packed off by CEO Felix Happer, colorfully played by Burt Lancaster, to Furness, a remote Scottish coastal village. His mission - to buy the town and adjacent beach, thus acquiring the land upon which Knox Oil plans to build a sprawling facility to receive North Sea crude. On site, MacIntyre finds himself dealing with a canny townsman named Urquhart, delightfully portrayed by Denis Lawson. (Urquhart, with his wholesomely sexy wife, owns the town's only hotel and only pub, and is apparently the local gentleman of influence when arranging matters of such great import.) Unforeseen complications in the negotiations arise, necessitating Happer's clattering arrival by helicopter late in the game. As it turns out, title to the village is of no use without the beach, and the latter is owned by a crusty, old beachcomber named, as luck and bloodlines would have it, Knox. LOCAL HERO exhibits that quirkiness of characters and circumstance that has made British comedies so appealing. Eccentricities abound. Take, for example, the sleepy hamlet's only street, which is always deserted except whenever MacIntyre needs to cross it, at which time he is almost run down by a yokel whizzing by on a motor scooter. Or, the Soviet fishing boat captain that makes periodic, illegal landfall at Furness to check on his very non-communist financial investments made through Urquhart. And, the baby that seems to belong to nobody, but is unconcernedly cared for by the town at large. Furness seems just ever so slightly askew - but only if you're an outsider. The fictional community of Furness is actually Pennan, north of Aberdeen on Moray Firth, and the Furness beach is actually Camusdarach Beach 150 miles distant on the western coast. Notwithstanding the filmmaker's magic in rearranging geography, anyone who has visited the breathtakingly beautiful shores of northern Scotland will understand the changes that occur in MacIntyre as he becomes exposed to the serene grandeur of his environment. What is the allure of Houston, or any other soulless place, when one could walk barefoot on Scottish sands under magnificent sunsets and collect seashells? The ending, which is supremely satisfying, should give anyone involved in a day-to-day rat race second thought about what gives life meaning.
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Summary: You can go home again.
Review: A very charming movie that bears up well under repeated viewings. Bill Forsyth has done so many good movies over the years, but I think this remains his best. Certainly, it is the closest to home, as he beautifully plays off the American-Scotland theme and the sense of misplaced identity. Peter Riegert is great as Mac, a representative of a large Houston oil company who has been chosen to close a deal on a harbor village in the north of Scotland, because of his presumed Scottish ancestry. Turns out Mac is of Hungarian, not Scottish descent, as his parents thought MacIntyre was an American name. Nevertheless, Mac soon finds himself adapting to the rugged North Sea coast, picking seashells from the tidal pools and adopting a rabbit his driver had inadvertantly hit on the road. Forsyth introduces the viewer to a wonderfully eccentric cast of characters in the small village, led by the amicable Gordon Urquhart, mayor, innkeeper, accountant and jack of all trades. Mac finds himself falling in love with Gordon's wife, but the playful romance is treated more in jest than in an attempt to foil the plot. It is in a grizzled beachcomber that we find the perfect foil to the land deal, which eventually brings the head of the oil commpany, Mr. Knox (played to perfection by Burt Lancaster) to Scotland. You will fall in love with this movie, as I did, carried along by its charm and beautifully poignant moments. Forsyth doesn't miss a beat in this playful movie.
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Summary: A Meditation on Authenticity
Review: Local Hero is appealing on many levels. There is, of course, the wondeful quirky story and characters, the music, the off-kilter British humor, and the magnificent scenery. But the reason I love this movie, and to me the real beauty of the film is watching what happens to Riegert. His Macintyre, a young, efficient corporate executive, is a man fully immersed in his time, his place, and his role. The time is the 1980s-the greed decade, some have billed it. The place is Knox Oil, Houston. His role at the firm and in his life is that of a hard boiled deal maker. And at the end of the day, he returns home to his luxury high rise, where he lives alone with his answering machine. Macintyre lives a life that's less than genuine, and on the deepest level, he knows it. But in Furness, we can see Macintyre's hard shell crack -- the result of his spending time in this authentic place-the power of Furness' pounding surf almost literally wears away his layers. When his walls are broken what's revealed for all of us to see, then, is nothing less than his true self. We can see it, for instance, in Macintyre's eyes as he laughs with Gordon, the Inn's proprietare over a drink during the high-stepping Scottish dance, and we can even see it in his hands when he empties his pockets of the sandy shells he's collected. I think that like Mac, most of us have forgotten or buried some part of our authentic selves, and that part of us quietly lays dormant. It might be buried from trying to mold ourselves to fit into some stultifying corporation, as with Macintyre. Or it could be from trying to live some other kind of unsatisfying life that's not in synch with who we really are. So, I think we can all hope that something like what happens to Mac will happen to us, or--be grateful that it already has. Mac's journey evokes T.S. Elliot's words: We shall not cease from exploration. And at the end of all of our exploring, will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time. The final scene of Local Hero is, I think, perhaps its most powerful. Somehow this ice cold scene manages to be both incredibly sad-and exhilirating-exhilirating because nothing is the same anymore, and we have to wonder...what's next.
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Summary: Possibly Brigadoon 2: Warm, witty, and simply wonderful...
Review: This movie has become one of my favorite movies of all time. The story is as follows:
Peter Reigert (Mac) is a fast-dealing/smooth talking Texas oil-man who is asked to go close a deal in Scotland. He must buy the town so the whole bay can be turned into a refinery. In a not-so-unexpected twist, the town is not as naiive as the Texans would hope. More importantly, things are not as easy as a simple payout. A lone hermit who lives on, and owns, the beach stands in the way. What makes this movie truly wonderful, is that the story of the purchase, is merely secondary to the story of how Mac falls in love with the town. He falls in love with the real...and the not so real. Meaning, he falls in love with the romantic vision of this small fishing town. In many ways, this movie reminds me of Brigadoon. Mac "discovers" a town, away from the hustle/bustle of his life. It literally "appears" to him out of the fog (which he encounters on the drive there). And, in the end, if his plan works...it will disappear. The music is beautiful (done by Marc Knopfler). The scenery stunning (shot on both the west and east coasts of Scotland). The acting excellent. And most importantly, the story is charming and heart-warming...yet leans towards the melancholy. I could not recommend a movie more.
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Summary: Where's Bill Forsythe when we need him?
Review: This movie really did inspire me. I got up the nerve to make a solo trip around Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. The scenes, characters and sounds of this movie are simply unforgettable. For sure, it's a cold heart that won't come out speakin' with a Scots accent with a touch of Russia.
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Summary: I don't know what movie David Chute saw . . .
Review: . . .so let's review "Local Hero," the 1983 sleeper that became a hit on HBO, and recently on DVD. On the surface, it seems to be your typical "country hicks save the day" movie. It even starts with Texas oil executive "Mac" MacIntyre's daily Porsche-commute. Mac works in the land division of Knox Industries, whose board of directors have a plan to "acquire Scotland -- that is, part of Scotland," as the site for a refinery and shipping terminal for North Sea oil (having already obtained drilling rights and begun work on pipelines to the planned facility). Mac (Peter Riegert), a self-professed "Telex man," who works from his desk rather than in the field, is sent to buy the land they need. So far, so good . . .or, so we think. Mac leads a lonely life -- he can't even get a date for his last night in the US -- and the highlight of his day is to be called to the office of Knox' top man, billionaire Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster). Happer, unimpressed with wealth and position, gives Mac a brief lesson in astronomy and a strange order -- to watch the clear rural skies during his trip. Happer fell in love with the skies during his days in the oil fields, decades before, and has focussed on discovering a comet as a legacy, in place of the family he never had. As Mac will be 6 hours ahead of Texas time, he will have the chance to report "anything out of the ordinary" on Happer's private line, giving the tycoon a chance to look for his comet. Far from scheming, Mac's job is one of simple negotiation, offer and counteroffer, but he finds the Scottish town to be a completely different environment than those he's used to. Helped along by Mark ("Dire Straits") Knopfler's intriguing score and the beauty of the Scottish location, the audience follows him through the stages of discovery that there is another way of life which might be better than his own. The cast includes the beautiful Marina (Jenny Seagrove), a marine biologist first introduced in the controlled environment of a Knox research tank (one can see why Mac later admits thinking of women in a fishtank!). She is then seen again in the waters of Furness Bay, where we find that she, too, is a bit unusual. In fact, everyone is a bit unusual, including the village residents (one man condemns the Maserati for not having room to carry lobster traps) and Happer's executive secretary, who chats on the phone with an unnamed prime minister about rasberries and toast. Eventually, we have to conclude that the only "normal" person in the whole film is Mac -- or is he? Is the life he knows REALLY based on sanity . . ? If we can relate only to Mac, what does that say about ourselves? This PG-rated film is the visual version of "Easy Listening." There is no stress, no foul language, no nudity, no drama (yet no open comedy), no hate, no preaching, no anything-else to get in the way of the enigma upon enigma presented by writer/director Bill Forsyth. If you are the type who needs every loose end tied off, this isn't your film -- in fact, we never even find out who the "Local Hero" really is, but are left with half a dozen different strong possibilties! However, if you are willing to just ride along, this charming film offers the sheer joy of absurdity without pretense. It also offers fuel for long, lazy discussions with someone you enjoy being near, on points not discovered until the third viewing. Or the thirty-third . . .and counting . . .
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Summary: Flawless little thing
Review: Local Hero's just wonderful, a charming thing. This movie is funny and happy and melancholy (and in some ways pretty dark), all at the same time. The spontaneity of tone is impeccable. I've never seen a film that so effortlessly allows its characters to drive its plot. There's never a false moment, and yet the plot itself is actually pretty highly developed, in its ersatz way. It's all just wonderful and spontaneous and lovely, that's all. I would recommend Local Hero extremely highly to anyone who appreciated Northern Exposure at its height. There are some very strong similarities, among them the distinctive locations and the extensive set of well rounded character roles. I often wondered if the TV show was directly inspired by the film. Bill Forsythe, the Scottish director of Local Hero, made a career of little character-based comedies. Gregory's Girl is another likeable movie of his that made U.S. distribution. He tried to move to Hollywood at one point, but got stuck working with Burt Reynolds in a sort of (well made but poorly cast) caper flick and probably left in disgust.
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Summary: Roles reversed
Review: My history with this film is rather bizarre. My father was an American oilman who married a Scottish woman (East coast though), but were in New Orleans at the time it was released. And also as a Scot I now find myself in Texas. This film and are inextricably linked somehow reflecting both sides of my family. For the actual description of the film and the soundtrack there's little if any i can say that hasn't be said already. Other than that having a family that represents both sides of the divide, it holds special meaning for me.
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Summary: A Dangerous Movie
Review: If you're at all impressionable, and if you've ever felt that there's got to be something more to life than shopping malls and SUV's, then it may be safest if you avoid watching this movie. I saw Local Hero when it came out in '83, and within 2 years I was living in a village on the North Sea coast of a small European country (not Scotland, as in the movie, but very similar in the most important ways). I'm still here. You have been warned.
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