Hero (1992)

Very Cool!!!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Provoking movie about press and heroes and the how this has a treatment by all kind of media to delivery to the public, could be better if they didn't have overdone some easy situations,maybe it don't filled the Hollywood's formula to making movies,so the product is damage since the beginning, somehow works and to a certain extent, another fantastic performance from Hoffman and Geena Daves too,remembering heroes don't give up!! Resume: First watch: 1995 / How many: 4 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 7.25

I always liked Dustin Hoffman. I've never known anyone else who could play a broader range of characters. From autistic sevant ("I'm an excellent driver""uh oh, only three minutes til Wapner"), to actor in drag ("you want me to play taller, you want me to play shorter, you want me to play a tomato"), to playboy charmer ("you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?"), to tough, little, and determined ("I'm walkin here!"), to firm but loving father ("take one bite of that ice cream and you're in big trouble young man!"). Dustin is nothing short of an acting genius.In hero, Dustin plays, well just that. He is Bernie Leplant. In some ways, Bernie is a hero. In other ways, he has hardly been judged father of the year. Not according to his ex Joan Cusack. First of all, Bernie is in trouble with the law and may be facing hard time. He's been dealing in illegal credit cards and software. He badly doesn't want his eleven year old son to know about that, of course. He wants him to really believe he is a hero. However, some of the advice he gives his son is not too smart. He believes that when finding a lost wallet at a restaurant, you keep it and not turn it in to the restaurant manager cause restaurant managers are crooks. He also believes that the homeless begging on the street are all con artists that take advantage of anyone with a soft heart. That one has some truth to it with some of them, but not with all of them like Bernie says. And Bernie is not right about many homeless owning condominiums. I've known both kinds of homeless people in my life, the ones who were lowdown lying con men and ones who had a kinder purer heart than anyone with money. I think that Bernie means well with trying to teach his son the ropes, but some of his views have been formed by his own personal life experiences causing him to totally lose trust with the world.The big movie moment is of course the plane crashing before Bernie's car and him heroically breaking the door down, walking inside of the crashed plane which is seriously infected with smoke and carbon monoxide, and drags out about 5 different injured and immobile people including news reporter Gena Davis. Nobody on the plane got any kind of good look at the mysterious rescuer's face, if they had, the movie would've taken a whole different turn. And nobody that knows him (his ex wife, his boss who fires him due to being tired of his c***) believes for one second that he pulled this courageous heroic move. Only his homeless friend Andy Garcia who is about to make a move no friend would do to a friend. Andy tells everybody he was the hero. He receives a million dollars, and becomes well loved by the entire city of Chicago. Even if Andy did hog the credit due to financial desperation and being sick and tired of being homeless, he could've still shared some of the wealth with Bernie, even 10% of it would've been $100,000 and the imposter would've still had $900,000. Bernie initially refused to take the credit for his rescue act because he's in trouble with the law and he didn't want to be spotted, and that he was a believer of keeping a low profile (as he told his son that too). But once he realized the way such a rescuer would get showered with such love and money, he realized how maybe his heroic act could've outweighed the trouble he was in. But he waited until it was too late. If he had come forward sooner, he would have had the $25,000 he needed for the court that he promised them with the judge not believing for a second that he would ever be able to produce. He would've completely turned his life around and everyone that knew him would've completely revaluated what they thought of him. But he waited until it was too late.Bernie spends a good part of the movie belatingly trying to convince everyone that he was the real hero, and remains very unsuccessful at convincing anybody, except his son who partially suspects maybe his dad really was the one since he came over to his exs wearing one shoe, and the hero was missing a shoe. But his mom, Joan quickly tells him that there was no way that his dad would ever have done any such thing, whether he was missing a shoe or not. As Bernie continues his increasing frustrations at nobody believing him, his legal problems continue to complicate his life further. Meanwhile, former homeless man Andy gets used to the good life and his newfound wealth, and has reporter Davis getting rather romantically interested in him due to his new hero status and for "saving her life". Chevy Chase plays Davis's boss at the news station. I could see how Chevy's glory days were ending. He wasn't quite the same anymore in this movie as he was during his kickin 1980s years in National Lampoon's vacation, European vacation, Christmas vacation, Fletch, and Funny farm. In Vegas vacation too in 1996, he noticeably lost his touch. Another interesting scene in this movie was when Davis interviewed a man who then jumped to his death off a forty story building. I did like Davis's onion metaphor at a news conference. Overall, this was a pretty good movie.

Some parts may a little slow, and perhaps Accidental Hero(or Hero) is a little too long, but other than that the film is very clever and very brave, and I think underrated as well. It does have a great story concerning a Mystery Samaritan(or "The Angel of Flight 104" as Andy Garcia claims himself to be), very well-constructed and written with a Capra-esquire element to it.Accidental Hero is wonderfully filmed, with great cinematography and the plane crash is well staged. The direction is assured, and the writing is very funny, yet deeply cynical and even pessimistic. The acting is top notch; Dustin Hoffmann shows what a great actor he is as he recalls his Ratso Rizzo role(basically a loser-turned-hero type of character), while Andy Garcia plays a true slime-ball to perfection and Geena Davis and Joan Cusack both convince as the journalist puzzled by the truth and Evelyn. And out of the cameos, Chevvy Chase's gets my vote as the funniest.Overall, an underrated and very good movie. 8/10 Bethany Cox

This movie could have been much better. The basic idea is sound and intriguing. The execution however, comes across as less than sincere, and that is a serious flaw. Dustin Hoffman carries "Hero" on the back of his unsympathetic character, who is constantly sending out mixed messages. Andy Garcia is totally miscast as a street bum. Geena Davis manipulates the story in a sugar coated fashion that weakens the entire production. The film drags in places, and probably would have benefited from trimming. Bottom line. "Hero" is watchable and an above average movie. It is however, a contrived melodrama that comes across as somewhat insincere. - MERK