Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19792 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-09-21
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Colour, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 111 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Long before The Full Monty there was this lovely fish-out-of-water comedy by deft Scots writer-director Bill Forsyth (Gregory's Girl). Set in the 1980s during a period of controversy over North Sea oil drilling, Local Hero follows a likeable, woolly American junior executive (Peter Riegert) dispatched from Texas by his blustering boss (a high-spirited Burt Lancaster) to a small fishing village on the coast of Scotland for the purpose of swindling the presumably simple-minded locals out of their drilling rights. The surprise isn't that the villagers turn the tables on the American schemers, but that they do so without displaying a hint of malice. They get a kick out of flummoxing the city slickers. Even Lancaster's greed-head Felix Happer eventually has a change of heart. In outline, this may sound more ordinary than it feels as you're watching it. The fine young British actor Denis Lawson, who had a tiny role as one of the fighter pilots in Star Wars plays Riegert's UK contact, Gordon Urquhart, a sad sack with a noble soul. --David Chute

Customer Reviews

Warm, Funny, Beautiful!
I will be the fist to admit that not every one is going to "get" this film - nor does it leave you rolling in the aisles. But for me personnally, this is an absolute gem of a movie! The music is wonderful - including Mark Knopler and Gerry Rafferty, the scenery truly beautiful and the cast superb - even if the talents of John Gordon Sinclair are slightly wasted. I have watched this movie numerous times and never tire of this. This is one of my favourite movies! If you enjoy subtle warm comedies - you will love this movie! Make sure when you buy this you also buy a good single malt to go with it - a perfect companion!

Home may not be where the heart is
Before the relative spate of British comedic films recently appearing on American screens - THE FULL MONTY, WAKING NED DEVINE, and SAVING GRACE - there was the 1983 release LOCAL HERO, a gentle fable of big city, corporate avarice meeting its match when pitted against rural backwater shrewdness.

Peter Riegert is cast as MacIntyre, a young Houston exec of Knox Oil, packed off by CEO Felix Happer, colorfully played by Burt Lancaster, to Furness, a remote Scottish coastal village. His mission - to buy the town and adjacent beach, thus acquiring the land upon which Knox Oil plans to build a sprawling facility to receive North Sea crude. On site, MacIntyre finds himself dealing with a canny townsman named Urquhart, delightfully portrayed by Denis Lawson. (Urquhart, with his wholesomely sexy wife, owns the town's only hotel and only pub, and is apparently the local gentleman of influence when arranging matters of such great import.) Unforeseen complications in the negotiations arise, necessitating Happer's clattering arrival by helicopter late in the game. As it turns out, title to the village is of no use without the beach, and the latter is owned by a crusty, old beachcomber named, as luck and bloodlines would have it, Knox.

LOCAL HERO exhibits that quirkiness of characters and circumstance that has made British comedies so appealing. Eccentricities abound. Take, for example, the sleepy hamlet's only street, which is always deserted except whenever MacIntyre needs to cross it, at which time he is almost run down by a yokel whizzing by on a motor scooter. Or, the Soviet fishing boat captain that makes periodic, illegal landfall at Furness to check on his very non-communist financial investments made through Urquhart. And, the baby that seems to belong to nobody, but is unconcernedly cared for by the town at large. Furness seems just ever so slightly askew - but only if you're an outsider.

The fictional community of Furness is actually Pennan, north of Aberdeen on Moray Firth, and the Furness beach is actually Camusdarach Beach 150 miles distant on the western coast. Notwithstanding the filmmaker's magic in rearranging geography, anyone who has visited the breathtakingly beautiful shores of northern Scotland will understand the changes that occur in MacIntyre as he becomes exposed to the serene grandeur of his environment. What is the allure of Houston, or any other soulless place, when one could walk barefoot on Scottish sands under magnificent sunsets and collect seashells? The ending, which is supremely satisfying, should give anyone involved in a day-to-day rat race second thought about what gives life meaning.

Quirky
This film is gorgeous. If you want to roar with laughter it might not be your cup of tea, but it's a real giggle right the way through and actually gets funnier with repeat viewing as you begin to notice all the little quirky moments.

If you remember the red telephone box, watching the American, Mac, trying to make a transatlantic call with a fist full of ten pence pieces will amuse. It's gentle observational comedy of the highest order, interspersed with moments of pure slapstick.

Well worth a watch, even if at times it seems a bit dated.