Local Hero (12A)

Local Hero

Bill Forsyth’s wonderfully wistful and charming comedy is re-released after 40 years, and its happy-sad aroma is still as pungent as ever.

The scene is a fictional fishing village in western Scotland, making its modest living from the lobster bound for the fancy restaurants of London and Paris, but which the locals can’t afford to eat. Peter Riegert plays Mac, a junior oil executive from Texas obsessed with work and material values, who has been tasked by his eccentric billionaire boss, Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster), to travel to this village and persuade the entire community to sell up so that Happer can build a refinery there and capitalise on the new gush of North Sea oil.

What makes this material really work is the low-key approach of Forsyth, and has the patience to let his characters gradually reveal themselves to the camera. He never hurries, and as a result the film never drags: Nothing is more absorbing than human personalities, developed with love and humor. Some of the payoffs in this film are sly and subtle, and others generate big laughs.