Movies: Sam Elliott in "The Hero"

Sometimes you want to watch a movie because you like the star of that movie. You do not care about socially redeeming value, you do not care about  how great the director was and you definitely do not care about how many tomatoes it got on Rotten Tomatoes. You simply want to see one particular person..... in this case it was Sam Elliott.  If you need to ask "why Sam Elliott" then I can only surmise you are either a straight man or a clueless woman. Come on.... Sam Elliott?  Sexy cowboy with that gravel voice?  I long for a movie with both Sam Elliott and Jeff Bridges. Whew, just the thought of that makes me swoon.

So, here we are, "The Hero", which going into it I knew not much about but I give it two thumbs up. The character Sam Elliott plays is an oldish guy who had some success in movies. I would not call him a movie star. When the movie begins, he is doing lame-ass voice overs for some barbeque sauce product and it is clear from the first frame that he thinks of himself as a loser and so does everyone else. In the second frame (virtually) we find out he has cancer and that now defines who he is. Well, to himself it does but no one else knows.

Nothing else needs to be said here. He finds a younger woman to convince him he is not totally fucked up. He sort of reconnects with his daughter. He finally faces the cancer and tries to do the right thing with everyone in his life. All that is predictable in this movie.

What is not predictable and what is so surprising is Sam Elliott's performance, his acting, his face, his emotions. There are times when he holds his face so still and yet within that stillness, within that silence he tells us everything. There are several scenes, some that last just a few seconds, when we see the amazing quality of an actor's face, transmitting everything to us, the audience. Like Jeff Bridges, Elliott knows when to move and when to stop and wait and breathe. The last half of this movie has many of those moments. Watch and see.

Another gift is that Elliott's wife, Katherine Ross, is in this movie for a few scenes. I fell in love with her in 1969 when she was Etta Place in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."  Seeing her in this movie, "The Hero", was a bonus.

It is not a great movie but it is a good movie. Not just for Sam Elliott but for the point of facing mortality and how to do that gracefully.  It's a lesson worth exploring.

.