A suitably icky portrait of how our chronically online culture begets incel culture with two fantastic central performances.
In a world where a tidal wave of online voices seek to convince the world who they really are, the search for online authenticity has never felt more like trying to find a needle in a haystack. In Oscar Boyson’s fierce and unsettling feature debut Our Hero, Balthazar by utilising two young men on opposite sides of the wealth spectrum he creates a toxically male vacuum to speak on America’s unique problem with extreme violence.
It is loneliness that drives so many of us away from our real selves and we first meet the titular Balthazar (Jaeden Martell) weeping into the glow of his phone’s expensive ringlight. He’s apparently torn up about a recent school shooting but as soon as he stops recording his face reverts to complete emotionlessness.These insincere attempts at garnering a manufactured, sympathetic following at the expense of a real, violent tragedy lead him to chat online with a “real school shooter” who claims he’s got a plan in place down in Texas.
There is an unnatural sheen about Balthazar or “Balthy’” as he likes to go by. A cold indifference that can only come from unabashed privilege and a constant need for attention he is not getting, especially after his father left his mother (Jennifer Ehle) for a new woman. Balthazar has all the money and resources in the world and a mother who feigns interest but ultimately leaves him constantly alone or in the hands of his frat boy life coach Anthony (Noah Centino). So in an attempt to impress his activist crush Eleanor (Pippa Knowles) who never even shows interest in him in the first place, he decides to head to Texas to stop this apparent school shooter and become a hero.
There is something deeply depressing about the electronic light and late night swiping that consumes the early feel of the film. Boyson’s direction is tight and suffocating at times which greatly benefits the emotional stiflement of both Balthazar and Solomon (Asa Butterfield) who turns out to be said “school shooter”. In a rather unbelievable plot development the pair end up meeting through a convoluted guise and start to grow strangely fond of each other. Solomon can talk the talk and boasts of his illegal gun collection thrust onto him by his grifter, absent father Beaver (Chris Bauer). But he is much more pathetic than his online persona might suggest, could he really shoot up a school or is this just a cry for help?
The film hops around with time and perspective offering insights into both Balthazar and Solomon’s wildly different existences yet shows how they are intrinsically linked in a culture that decimates young men’s attempts at being emotionally open or truly themselves. Asa Butterfield gives the best performance of his life as Solomon. Totally against type he thrives as the awkward, stunted and neglected boy grown up in great poverty and caring for his sick grandmother. His poorly dyed blonde mullet, unkempt beard and chunky glasses are the polar opposite to Balthazar’s clean and fresh appearance but their faces and expressions often look the same. Both boys are searching for someone, anyone to just recognise that they exist beyond some sort of extension of themselves. There’s a dangerous sense that they’d both do anything for attention, which has turned them both into incels separated only by class.
There’s an inherent, inevitable sadness to where the film goes and it sometimes overeaches and risks becoming ridiculous in its ever changing commentary, kooky characters and one flourish too many. But there is more going on than meets the eye and in Solomon’s receded warmth and care towards his grandmother, he must pay rent on their trailer but his dad is trying to grift him out of his earnings from selling his share of fake testosterone supplements. There is a humanity to Solomon that makes his bravado even more disappointing, if anything, Balthazar is the more sociopathic of the two and more likely to shoot up a school, but as with life we know where the power lies.
Control of narrative both on the internet and to those around us are controlled by the elite and uber rich who are exactly the people who prey on those more vulnerable than them. No wonder people drift down extremist, radicalised paths when they either can’t see how they’ll make it to tomorrow or wonder what it is they’re actually going to do tomorrow?
3.5 / 5
Our Hero, Balthazar condenses contemporary worries into a messy but effective cocktail of modern angst. This is a strong debut that grapples with issues that are relatively new on screen but frighteningly familiar for the modern audience.
