Hello Herman (2013)

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The two leads of this film do an adequate to excellent job all things considered. But that's really about the nicest thing I can say about this movie.The makers of this film either were trying to make a piece of blatant propaganda or were sincerely interested in giving a dynamic presentation of a complex issue but fell flat on their face. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and hope it was the latter. I will say this, the makers do seem to have an at least slightly more lucid understanding of the issue of school shootings than say, Michael Moore, or a lot of other mainstream Hollywood personalities do. For example, "I shot as many people as I did because I had to reset the precedent" is exactly the kind of thing a school mass shooter would say, maybe not after being arrested but before in his journals and "confession" tapes. They were able to recognize and convey the idea that infamy is at least almost as big a motive for people like Herman as "revenge" and that there is more too it than just "wahaha I was bullied so now I'm gonna show everyone by shooting up my school".The problem is, that little bit of remarkable perceptiveness and insight is completely balanced out by asinine and simplistic messages about other aspects of school shootings. Anyone who has researched the issue even a little in depth knows that the majority of school shooters are not really severely bullied and the ones that clear whole classrooms are especially unlikely to have been severely hazed, in fact they are often bullies themselves. This is not to say that it was "wrong" per se for them to portray Herman as having been a victim of hazing and cyberbullying, the filmmakers are not obligated to make him exactly like other school shooters and should be free to form their own interpretive framework, but they just really hammered it home too hard. Degrassi can be somewhat excused for their overly simplistic interpretation of the relationship between hazing and school shootings because they made that episode at a time when the narrative that the CHS shooters were just two bullied teens driven to the edge by extreme hazing was still the most widely accepted theory, but that notion has long since been debunked, and in 2012-2015 we should know better. I've seen a couple people ask why they chose to cast a pretty boy as the shooter. Well to be honest that was one of their better decisions, because the students who do this kind of thing really are often pretty boys, not acne-ridden overweight outcasts. I mean obviously it's true that a pretty boy can be a bullying victim as much as anyone else, but the narrative that the skinny emo kid that no one talks to is the most likely to attempt an act like this is a disingenuous and frankly dangerous one. Being antisocial does not automatically rank you at the bottom of the food chain.Every other aspect of the film is a jumbled mess. It seems like in an attempt to frame a dynamic "discussion" about school shootings they decided to try and shoe-horn in as many related topics as possible, but as a result they ended up taking the most juvenile and superficial approach to each one. There's that one political show that serves as an obvious and obnoxious allegory for Fox right-wing talk shows, which is really no more subtle than an SNL sketch about the same subject. There's a Michelle Bachman-like Republican legislator (they just couldn't resist including her party affiliation for the record) who I guess is supposed to p#ss us off with how b#tchy and unsympathetic to Herman she is except the film never really gives us any reason for us to fell all that sorry for him either. Then, as if in an attempt to make it more fair to conservatives, they have some liberal d##s##t commentator who is also presented as being just as much of a moron, along with his "killing people won't stop people from killing people" followers. Maybe the message was "hey look, talking heads who get involved in school shooting stories are nothing more than opportunistic bloodsuckers no matter which end of the political spectrum they hail from", but I doubt it.There's also some peripheral expository arch about Herman's sister having been killed by a car a couple years before the shooting, complete with way over-the-top sequences of him being haunted by her. The best I can tell is that since he felt it was his fault, that feeling of already having blood on his hands made him less apprehensive about the massacre, but they never really explain it in so much detail. There's also a side-story about Lax Morales's having rolled with a quasi-neonazi underground group during the days of his youth and possibly having been implicated as an accessory in the manslaughter death of a black teenager. The relevance this has to the rest of the movie is never flushed out; they clearly thought it was contributing to some kind of "hate breeds hate, violence breeds violence" message which I suppose could have worked but didn't.For people familiar with school shooting movies, "Zero Day" is usually the gold-standard. Now I don't think this film should have been "like Zero Day" and for the record I think some of the things they did were pretty clever. But watching Zero Day can help make clear some of the things that this film unquestionably did wrong.

The idea of the movie was great, more of it too. But emoitons are like drained, they are gone. Mother who losing her son don't just cry, she is completely destroyed by grief. On top of it - nobody should let an execution of non adult kid to be showed on television. The end was ridiculous too - he just continued his show like nothing happened. There were nasty scenes with the "negar" kid, and nobody said how he made it and escaped from that group, Lax I mean. Not good enough for me. Norman's playing was absolutely professional as always, and his character was more convincing than Herman's one. That offset the viewer's attention from the real problem. Great idea, bad performance, that's what I have to say. I couldn't feel the emotions of that drama, I couldn't see it from the deviations. You have no more than five from me. And it's too much.

I thought "Hello Herman" did a good job of adding to the ongoing dialogue about violence and bullying and gun control, that is currently taking place in this country. It explores ideas such as how violence finds it's way into our schools, how media (like video games) may contribute or deter people from acting out violently, and what can be done to prevent violence form happening again. One thing I noticed was that the boy in the story, child-killer Herman seems very calm when he is programming his own video game, and less calm/more excited when he is playing someone else's violent video games. I think this points out that creativity can be a great way to deal with stress, while on the flip side playing a violent shooting game probably has the opposite effect. I think one theme that is important to keep in mind when watching this movie is how the bullied become bullies themselves. Herman is picked on by the cool kids and in the end becomes the bullies worst nightmare. I think people should watch this movie because the discussion about bullying and violence in our culture is very relevant to the world and country we live in. This film shines a light on these issues without feeling heavy-handed. It was well acted with a superb performance from Norman Reedus who I recognized from "Boondock Saints" and AMC's "Walking Dead." The director Michelle Danner coaxed nuanced performances from the entire cast.

Gunshots and screams echoing through a school gymnasium: that's how young Herman chose to be heard. From the very beginning, "Hello Herman", a film by Michelle Danner, strikes the audiences attention with the troubled life of Herman Howards. From the very beginning, "Hello Herman", a film by Michelle Danner, strikes the audiences attention with the troubled life of Herman Howards. In this impactful and controversial film, the audience is thrust into the mind of a young murderer, who paralleled the infamous Columbine massacre. Norman Reedus, star of AMC's "The Walking Dead", portrays the role of Internet reporter, Lax Morales. Lax is called upon to record his conversations with young Herman to uproot his reasoning behind his actions. Through Herman's stories, Lax is shown how Herman's life of being bullied by his peers drove him to act as he did. The topic this film brings to light, accentuates the impact of bullying in schools on students. It shows that those who have only known cruelty from others can be driven to show that cruelty in return. The hectic insanity of media coverage and political involvement in these domestic tragedies is well exhibited throughout the film with newscasts on Herman's case; they openly condemn Herman and plague his family with additional heart wrenching grief, bringing his mother to the brink of insanity. Through the relationship between Herman and Lax, Herman's character goes from being perceived as a mindless killer to a helpless, misunderstood boy, reaching out to be heard. The movie itself is beautifully shot and well paced, leaving the audience engaged in both the story lines of Lax Morales and Herman Howards. Through the life of Herman Howards, the audience is thrust into the heartbreaking truth that devaluing human life leads to a breaking point where even the most innocent become the guilty.