‘How do you do business with a man who has no door?‘
This is one of those weird ones. I can’t remember why I added it to my watchlist, or when for that matter. There is nobody within the principal cast whose work I particularly admire (although Peter Capaldi is always a treat). I know nothing of writer/director Bill Forsyth’s work (having never seen Gregory’s Girl). And yet, here I sit of a Saturday morning with the cat purring gently on my lap watching Local Hero. And very much like the Saturday morning of which I speak, Forsyth’s meditation on the worth of things is a pleasant if ever-so-slightly dull experience…
When Mac (Peter Riegert) is sent to a coastal Scottish village in order to buy the whole place out for an oil company, he doesn’t expect to be charmed into submission by the eccentric locals. Which is odd because every time I have visited a Scottish village (three times this has happened), I too have been charmed into submission by the eccentric locals within the hour. Oldsen (Capaldi) acts as Mac’s tour guide with Happer (Burt Lancaster), Mac’s boss, looking on from afar.
And so, Local Hero offers everything you would expect from such a story. Gorgeous scenery. Wry smiles. Whiskey. A local siren with webbed feet. Ok, maybe not that last thing, but the rest of it is fairly predictable. And it’s all very pleasant. A Sunday afternoon film if ever I saw one. It’s also pretty dull and forgettable, but that comes with the territory, I suppose.
Local Hero is a film that I enjoyed for 90 minutes that I will now never think of ever again.