OUR HERO, BALTHAZAR (2025)
4 stars
Signature Entertainment. Digital. 11th August.
OUR HERO, BALTHAZAR is built around two powerhouse performances from Jayden Martell and an almost unrecognisable Asa Butterfield.
Martell plays Balthazar (or Balty as he prefers to be called), a city rich kid with divorced parents. He has no real relationship with his Dad and is ignored by his socialite Mum, whilst he languishes in the luxury high rise where he and his mother live. He is even given short shrift by his life coach (something every over indulged kid should have clearly).
To assuage his loneliness, and to feel part of a community, he posts videos online – of himself crying, as he has the ability to turn on the waterworks at the drop of a hat! Not that he has any real interest in the things he is supposedly upset about.
At his school, during mass shooting preparedness training, which is an actual thing apparently, he becomes enamoured, even obsessed, with Eleanor (Pippa Knowles) who speaks out passionately about the very American problem of the proliferation of guns and mass shootings in education establishments. Statistically speaking youngsters are the number one targets for this kind of massacre!
Rebuffed by her, as he is more than a little bit weird, he determines to try and prevent such an incident and finds someone calling themselves ‘deathdealer_16’ (worrying that they have had to append that high a number after their identity), who claims they are going to carry out one such violent act.
By underhand means, he meets up with the possible shooter, who turns out to be Solomon (Butterfield) a loner, who lives with his grandma on a trailer park and has no real future. What unfolds is an uneasy, kind of strange, buddy movie.
Exploring one of the most troubling and endemic features of student life in present day America, this doesn’t hit you over the head with it’s messaging – but rather shows how, even in a time when we are supposedly more connected than ever, young men can spiral into dark places, where they think the only way out is brutal bloodshed.
Steve Kirkham
