MacIntyre, an executive, is chosen for his Scottish last name by his oil American company to travel from Houston, Texas to the village of Ferness, Scotland, and buy off property leading to the sea in order for said company to build an oil pipeline there. Macintyre and another copany employee Oldsen arrive there by car and settle at an inn run by Urquhart and his wife. Macintyre contacts his boss Happer regularly via the only phone booth in Ferness. When an old man, Ben, doesn't want to sell his land on the beach, Happer travels personally there to negotiate with him. However, Ben actually persuades Happer to build an astronomical observatory and marine research facility instead, while the oil would go through an offshore refinery. Back in the US, MacIntyre feels isolated. In Ferness, the phone booth rings again.
The director Bill Forsyth's third film, "Local Hero" is a quiet, amusing, restrained and minimalist comedy about the difference between the urban, extroverted and rural, introverted mentality—and the contemplation on which one is more rewarding in life. Overstretched and thin, with sometimes too lukewarm ideas, "Local Hero" nontheless still has enough charm built almost exclusively on small vignettes and gentle, comical culture clash between the American protagonist from a big city staying in a Scottish village. Forsyth's concept neatly sets up a local Scottish film "augmented" by an American international dimension since an American oil company is "at the mercy" of the Scottish village to buy off their land for a pipeline. Several little jokes are amusing: for instance, in the opening act, the CEO of the oil company, Happer (Burt Lancester) fell asleep and is snoring during a business meeting, so the managers give their plan in whisper to each other, as to not bother him. The inn keeper Urquhart tells some roof workers to stop making noise, but when his wife enters his room and they start passionately kissing, he tells the workers through the window to resume working, as he becomes intimate with her.
There is a whole running gag of a psychiatrist trying out his "shock therapy" of insulting Happer even after he was fired, so the psychiatrist continues with it (he phones Happer in his home to insult him, Happer hangs up, but after a while picks up the phone again and finds out the psychiatrist is still on; the psychiatrist gluing paper pieces with letters to assemble "Happer Motherfu..." on the company's windows). There is also a delicious gag where Ben doesn't want to sell his beach property, and when he grabs a bundle of sand in his hand, he asks: "Would you pay me a pound for every grain of sand in my hand?" MacIntyre says no, but then Ben says that there couldn't have been more "than 10,000 grains of sand in his hand". The local village characters, except for Urquhart, ended up underwritten and almost as extras, which reduces the film's range, and several episodes could have been cut for a tighter rhythm (for instance the pointless supporting character of a Russian ship captain who visits the village). Congruent with the state of mind he is trying to conjure up, Forsyth directs the film in a simple, conventional, meditative way, which requires the viewers to adjust to its "frequency". In most of movies, the big company absorbs the little nature, but this films offers a different outcome, which is refreshing. "Local Hero" needed more jokes and more highlights written for the rather bland protagonist, yet its last two scenes will stay in the viewers' mind—how Forsyth made this ending resonate so subconsciously in such a simple way is a delight.
Grade:++
