ART IMITATES LIFE (OR VICE VERSA)
Sam Elliott a joy to watch in The Hero, a role that suits him down to his boots
Critics like to applaud actors for stepping outside their comfort zones: Think Tom Cruise in Collateral, Charlize Theron in Monster, or Adam Sandler in anything that isn’t stupid. But what happens when an actor walks straight into the zone? Jean-Claude Van Damme did it in 2008’s excellent JCVD; so did Paul Giamatti in Cold Souls the following year.
Sam Elliott’s character in The Hero is named Lee Hayden, but he is for all intents and purposes Elliott, or at least Elliott as we imagine him. In the first scene he’s in a recording booth, laying down take after take of a track for Lone Star Barbecue Sauce: “The perfect pard’ner for your chicken.” (The real Elliott is the bass sales pitch for Dodge, Coors, the American Beef Council and others.)
Elliott got his big-screen start as “Card Player #2” in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and although he’s done a bit of everything, it’s easiest to imagine him in westerns, either straight (Tombstone, Conagher) or played for laughs (Thank You for Smoking, TV’s The Ranch).
Elliott has been twice nominated for Golden Globes and Primetime Emmys, but his mantel must be crowded with the five Bronze Wranglers given to him by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma. So when Lee’s agent tells him he’s being given a lifetime achievement award from the Western Appreciation and Preservation Guild, the line between fact and fiction becomes very thin indeed.
Lee also learns he has terminal cancer. And he meets Charlotte (Laura Prepon), who is half his age but honestly into him. Lee is the first one to be weirded out by the mutual attraction, but imminent death has a way of reshuffling your priorities. It turns out you can’t worry about mortality and mortification at the same time.
As written by Marc Basch and director Brett Haley (I’ll See You in My Dreams), Lee’s story is sometimes a little too spot on. He has an estranged wife (played by Elliott’s actual wife of more than 30 years, Katharine Ross) and a daughter (Krysten Ritter) from whom he has drifted apart over the years and must now reconcile. His best friend (and pot dealer) is Jeremy (Nick Offerman), who was his young co-star in a TV series from many moons ago that lasted but a single season.
But Elliott walks through the tale with such lightness and grace that it’s a joy just to watch
THE HERO ★★★ 1/2 out of 5 Cast: Sam Elliott, Laura Prepon Director: Brett Haley D ur at ion:1h33m
him do it. You could be uncharitable and say he’s phoning it in, or you might consider if there’s any star’s voice you’d rather hear on the phone than his. (OK, maybe Christopher Walken, who had his own old-guy-coming-toterms movie a while back in One More Time.)
It’s also fun to watch when Lee unexpectedly goes off-script at the Western awards, and to see what happens when an aging cowpoke suddenly gets offered a hip new role. “It’s this fantasy thing based on a young-adult novel,” his agent says. Sounds a lot like The Golden Compass, in which Elliott played a cowboy figure named Lee. You literally can’t make this stuff up.