Local Hero

Directed by Bill Forsyth, Local Hero follows an oil executive (Peter Riegert’s Mac) as he arrives in a small Scottish town to buy properties and land on behalf of his company (led by Burt Lancaster’s oddball Felix Happer). It’s a fairly standard premise that’s employed to periodically compelling yet primarily erratic effect by Forsyth, as the filmmaker, working from his own screenplay, delivers a sluggishly paced comedy that gets off to an especially (and palpably) underwhelming start – with the opening stretch’s emphasis on inscrutable, egregiously quirky elements establishing a somewhat intolerable atmosphere. (Virtually everything involving Lancaster’s astrology-obsessed figure, for example, strikes all the wrong notes, ultimately.) There’s little doubt, then, that Local Hero improves considerably once it progresses into its gentle, mostly watchable midsection, as Forsyth places the emphasis on Mac’s appealing fish-out-of-water exploits and his ongoing encounters with the idiosyncratic locals – with the highlight a charming sequence set inside a well-attended community gathering. And although the picture eventually progresses into a rather lackluster third act, Local Hero has, by that time, cemented its place as a decent-enough comedy that generally feels like it should be much, much better.

**1/2 out of ****