The Hero

Sam Elliott brings the full force of his whiskey-soaked voice and silvery, sexy charm to this bittersweet portrait of an aging cowboy movie star. With his career mostly in his rearview mirror, worrisome health issues, and fraught relationships with his ex-wife Valarie (Katharine Ross, Elliott’s real-life spouse of 32 years) and 30-something daughter Lucy (Krysten Ritter), Lee Hayden is only too aware of the gulf between the valiant screen presence of his signature role and his own frail humanity. But then he meets Charlotte (Laura Prepon), a standup comic not much older than his daughter, and receives unexpected notoriety from a lifetime achievement awards bash. A man who has been living on the fumes of past glories suddenly begins to contemplate a future. Director Brett Haley has ingeniously crafted a film around Elliott, who made his screen debut in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and who is one of the few contemporary actors to forge a career in Westerns. Haley contrasts Lee’s image as a celluloid gunslinger in scenes from the classic movie that gives The Hero its name with the sometimes cranky, uncertain, but still formidably charismatic reality of the flesh-and-blood man. And while Lee may be contemplating his mortality, a wealth of humor and his budding romance with Charlotte assures that the film is anything but downbeat. —Pam Grady