Recensioni di Metacritic

It's cagey, funny and vivaciously smart. It may also be one of the worldliest fairy tales ever made, and that rarest of all things, a family film with real meat on its bones.

Hero dips into the world of Capra's Meet John Doe, and comes up with an even more repellant visage of the Media/Citizenry connection than that film.

Hero heads for the high ground of the dark, sorrowful comedies of Preston Sturges (Hail the Conquering Hero) and Frank Capra (Meet John Doe). Credit the film then for having a goal, even though it loses sight of it with disturbing rapidity.

Stephen Frears' Hero is a slyly entertaining reinvention of the old newspaper comedy - Frank Capra's Meet John Doe, William Wellman's Nothing Sacred, Howard Hawks' The Front Page - on the altar of TV. In an image-dominated age, what does the concept of heroism mean? Not much, once TV gets hold of it, Hero says. But it's peachy, not preachy, celebrating energy, resourcefulness and cheerful amorality. [02 Oct 1992, p.45]

Stephen Frears's film is always lively and often shrewd, but in the end Hero is at war with itself. The movie's Capraesque heart is locked in battle with its cynical, contemporary brain.

A little more zip, and Hero might really have worked. It has all the ingredients for a terrific entertainment, but it lingers over the kinds of details that belong in a different kind of movie.

Besides a smattering of good gags, David Webb Peoples' script touches on numerous intriguing questions (notably, what constitutes heroism?) while piling irony upon irony. But while Garcia waxes credibly sincere, Hoffman hams, and Davis simply looks lost: small wonder, given Frears' leaden direction, which contrives to scupper suspense and comedy through sluggish pacing and misguided camera placement.

Aside from a few moments of comedy between Davis and Chase (in a relationship lifted almost unaltered from THE FRONT PAGE), HERO is an embarrassment best forgotten by everyone involved.

Davis and Garcia are both fine, and Hoffman gives an entertaining performance that still smells a little much of acting. But it's in the supporting roles that Frears makes his taste and talent felt, guiding such performers as Kevin J. O'Connor, Tom Arnold and Cady Huffman to quick, quietly efficient characterizations. [02 Oct 1992, p.B]

If a hero is one who perseveres and never gives up, this is one Hero that should have quit when it was ahead.