| Local Hero | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Bill Forsyth |
| Written by | Bill Forsyth |
| Produced by | David Puttnam |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Chris Menges |
| Edited by | Michael Bradsell |
| Music by | Mark Knopfler |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox[1] |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 111 minutes[1] |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £3 million[2] or £2.6 million[3] |
| Box office | $5.9 million (US)[4] |
Local Hero is a 1983 Britishcomedy-drama[1] film written and directed byBill Forsyth and produced byDavid Puttnam. It starsPeter Riegert,Burt Lancaster,Denis Lawson,Peter Capaldi, andFulton Mackay. Riegert plays an American oil company representative who is sent to the fictional village of Ferness on the west coast of Scotland to purchase the town and surrounding property to build an oil refinery. The musical score was composed byMark Knopfler.
The film premiered on 17 February 1983. It received critical acclaim, and holds a100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[5] At the37th British Academy Film Awards, the film was nominated for sevenBAFTA Awards and wonBest Direction for Forsyth. In 1999, theBritish Film Institute ranked the film as one of theTop 100 British films of the 20th century.
A stage musical adaptationof the same name, written by Forsyth and Knopfler, premiered in 2019.
"Mac" MacIntyre is an aspiring executive working for Knox Oil and Gas inHouston, Texas. Felix Happer, the company's eccentric owner, chooses Mac because of his Scottish sounding surname to acquire Ferness, a village in the Scottish Highlands, to make way for a refinery. Mac, actually of Hungarian extraction, is apprehensive about the assignment, complaining to a co-worker that he would rather handle business over the phone and viatelex. Happer, an avid amateur astronomer, tells Mac to watch the sky and to notify him immediately if he sees anything unusual.
Arriving in Scotland, Mac teams up with local Knox representative Danny Oldsen. When they visit a Knox research facility inAberdeen, Dr. Geddes explains the plan to replace Ferness with the refinery. They also meet marine researcher Marina.
Mac spends several days in Ferness, gradually adapting to the slower-paced life and getting to know the residents, most notably hotel owner and accountant Gordon Urquhart and his wife Stella. Mac becomes more and more conflicted as he presses to close the deal that will demolish the village he has come to love. The villagers, however, are tired of their hard life and are more than eager to sell, though they feign indifference to induce a larger offer. Mac receives encouragement from an unlikely source: Victor, a capitalisticSoviet fishing boat captain who periodically visits his friends in Ferness and checks on his investment portfolio, managed by Gordon.
Meanwhile, Danny befriends Marina, who is under the impression that the company is planning to build a research centre at Ferness. During a date, he discovers that Marina, who seems more at home in the water than on land, haswebbed toes. While watching somegrey seals, Danny mentions that sailors used to believe they weremermaids. Marina tells him the sailors were wrong.
Meanwhile, in the United States of America, Happer grows gradually disillusioned with his therapist, whose “treatment” involves showering Happer with a continuous torrent of verbal abuse. The therapist continues to obsessively harass and verbally abuse Happer, at first over the phone, eventually climbing up several storeys to reach Happer's office where he attempts to plaster the words “Happer, you’re a motherfucker” onto the window, whereupon Happer tells his secretary to call the police, and tell them to shoot the therapist off the window of the building. He then prepares to leave for Scotland.
As the deal nears completion, Gordon discovers that Ben Knox, an oldbeachcomber who lives in adriftwood shack on the shore, owns the beach through a grant from theLord of the Isles to his ancestor. After being offered thirty thousand pounds, Ben picks up some sand and offers to sell for the same number of pound notes as he has grains of sand in his hand. A suspicious MacIntyre declines, only to be told there could not have been more than ten thousand grains. MacIntyre continues to try everything to entice Ben to sell, even offering enough money to buy a similar stretch of any other beach in the world, but Ben is not interested.
Happer finally arrives on site, just in time to unknowingly forestall an ugly confrontation between some of the villagers and Ben. When Mac informs him of the snag in the proceedings, he decides to negotiate personally with Ben and, in the process, discovers a kindred spirit. Happer opts to relocate the refinery offshore and set up an astronomical observatory instead. Danny brings up Marina's dream of anoceanographic research facility and suggests combining the two into the "Happer Institute", an idea that Happer enthusiastically embraces. Sent back home to implement the changes, a sombre MacIntyre returns to his apartment in Houston. He pulls from his pocket pebbles and shells and spreads them out on the work surface. The local phone box in Ferness starts ringing.
Warner Bros. andGoldcrest Films originally declined to fundLocal Hero. However, when Puttnam won aBAFTA forChariots of Fire in 1982, Goldcrest agreed to finance the entire film. Warner Bros. agreed to pay $1.5 million for US rights.[3]
Puttnam always wanted Burt Lancaster to play Happer but the casting proved problematic because the Hollywood star wanted his $2 million salary, which was almost a third of the film's entire budget. Upon learning of Lancaster's potential involvement in the project,Warner Bros. offered Puttnam a US distribution deal and provided the additional funding to secure Lancaster. After negotiations, Puttnam ended up having an additional $200,000 in the film's budget. He later remarked in an interview that "big stars are not a liability, they are an asset!"[citation needed]
Michael Douglas andHenry Winkler were both actively pursued by Bill Forsyth for the role of MacIntyre (which ultimately went toPeter Riegert).[citation needed]
Local Hero was filmed in several locations around Scotland. Most of the Ferness village scenes were filmed inPennan on theAberdeenshire coast, and most of the beach scenes atMorar andArisaig on the west coast.[6][7]
The film'ssoundtrack was written and produced byMark Knopfler ofDire Straits. This has led to the popularity of the film with fans of the band,[citation needed] and Knopfler has since performed an arrangement of "Going Home (Theme of the Local Hero)" as an encore at many of his concerts.[8] This tune borrows some melodic riffs from traditional Scottish songs. In his review of the album forAllMusic, William Ruhlmann wrote:
Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler's intricate, introspective fingerpicked guitar stylings make a perfect musical complement to the wistful tone of Bill Forsyth's comedy film,Local Hero ... The low-key music picks up traces of Scottish music, but most of it just sounds like Dire Straits doing instrumentals, especially the recurring theme, one of Knopfler's more memorable melodies.[9]
Knopfler re-recorded the theme with fellow guitarists includingBruce Springsteen,Brian May andJeff Beck (credited as 'Mark Knopfler's Guitar Heroes') in aid ofTeenage Cancer Trust in March 2024.[10][11] The track peaked at #18 on theUK singles chart.[12]
Gerry Rafferty provided the vocals for "The Way It Always Starts" on the soundtrack. The album was certified aBPI silver record.[9]
The film received strongly positive reviews, except in Scotland.
In hisChicago Sun-Times review,Roger Ebert gave the film his highest four stars, calling it "a small film to treasure". He gave particular praise to writer-director Bill Forsyth for his abilities as a storyteller.
What makes this material really work is the low-key approach of the writer-director, Bill Forsyth, who also made the charmingGregory's Girl and has the patience to let his characters gradually reveal themselves to the camera. He never hurries, and as a result,Local Hero never drags: Nothing is more absorbing than human personalities, developed with love and humor. Some of the payoffs in this film are sly and subtle, and others generate big laughs. Forsyth's big scenes are his little ones, including a heartfelt, whisky-soaked talk between the American and the innkeeper, and a scene where the visitors walk on the beach and talk about the meaning of life. By the time Burt Lancaster reappears at the end of the film, to personally handle the negotiations with old Ben,Local Hero could hardly have anything but a happy ending.[13]
James Berardinelli gave the film three and a half stars out of four, calling it "a fragment of cinematic whimsy—a genial dramatic comedy that defies both our expectations and those of the characters". Berardinelli also focused on Forsyth's abilities as a storyteller, noting that the director "finds the perfect tone for this not-quite-a-fairy-tale set in a quaint seaside Scottish village named Ferness. By injecting a little (but not too much) magical realism into the mix, Forsyth leavens his pro-environmental message to the point that those not looking for it might not be conscious of its presence." Berardinelli concluded thatLocal Hero represents "the best kind of light fare: a motion picture that offers a helping of substance to go along with an otherwise frothy and undemanding main course".[14]
The New York Times criticJanet Maslin wrote, "Genuine fairy tales are rare; so is film-making that is thoroughly original in an unobtrusive way. Bill Forsyth's quirky disarmingLocal Hero is both." Maslin concluded:
Local Hero is a funny movie, but it's more apt to induce chuckles than knee-slapping. LikeGregory's Girl, it demonstrates Mr. Forsyth's uncanny ability for making an audience sense that something magical is going on, even if that something isn't easily explained.[15]
InVariety magazine, film critic Todd McCarthy wrote, "After making the grade internationally with the sleeper hit,Gregory's Girl, Scottish writer-director Bill Forsyth has broken the sophomore sesh jinx the only way he could, by making an even better film ... Given a larger canvas, director Forsyth has in no way attempted to overreach himself or the material, keeping things modest and intimate throughout, but displaying a very acute sense of comic insight."[16]
Almar Haflidason calledLocal Hero "a wry film that slowly slips under the skin to surprising effect" inBBC Home. Haflidason concludes, "Once over, the mood of the film hits home and a longing develops to visit once again the characters of this warm and deceptively slight comedy."[17]
ForMovie Gazette, Gary Panton described the film as a "magical, intelligent comedy". Panton praised the cinematography as "little short of amazing" and thatLocal Hero was "Bill Forsyth's finest work of all, this is a perfect film."[18]
During his2000 campaign for the presidency, US Vice-presidentAl Gore toldOprah Winfrey in an interview thatLocal Hero was his favourite film.[19]
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film received a 100% rating based on 40 reviews, with an average rating of 8.80/10. The site's consensus reads: "A charmingly low-key character study brought to life by a tremendously talented cast,Local Hero is as humorous as it is heartwarming".[5] OnMetacritic, the film has a score of 84 out of 100, based on reviews from 16 critics.[20]
Some Scottish critics were less enthusiastic about the film, pointing out that it repeated and reinforced long-established cinematic representations of Scotland and the Scots and perpetuated a comforting but misleading narrative about Scotland's relationship with international capitalism.[21][22][23] The Glasgow Women and Film Collective questioned what it saw as the film's male-oriented narrative about innocence and power and the marginal roles it accorded to women.[24]
Local Hero earned $5,895,761 in total gross sales in the United States.[4] It earned distributors gross of £487,437 in the UK.[25]
Goldcrest Films invested £2,551,000 in the film and received £3,290,000, earning them a profit of £739,000.[26]
| Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | British Academy Film Awards[27] | Best Actor in a Supporting Role | Burt Lancaster | Nominated |
| Best Cinematography | Chris Menges | Nominated | ||
| Best Direction | Bill Forsyth | Won | ||
| Best Editing | Michael Bradsell | Nominated | ||
| Best Film | David Puttnam | Nominated | ||
| Best Film Music | Mark Knopfler | Nominated | ||
| Best Original Screenplay | Bill Forsyth | Nominated | ||
| 1983 | National Board of Review Awards[28] | Top Ten Films | Local Hero | Won |
| 1984 | National Society of Film Critics Awards[29] | Best Screenplay | Bill Forsyth | Won |
| 1984 | New York Film Critics Circle Awards[30] | Best Screenplay | Bill Forsyth | Won |
The minor planet7345 Happer isnamed after Lancaster's character in the film and his quest to have a comet named after him.[31][32]
The song "Going Home: The Theme of the Local Hero", from the soundtrack, is used as thewalk-on music forNewcastle United F.C. atSt James' Park.Mark Knopfler, the composer, grew up in Newcastle and is a fan of the club.[33][34][35]
This film was inspiration for the television seriesNorthern Exposure, as it was a favourite of series writerJoshua Brand.[36]
In October 2025, the film was screened as 'Tribute to David Puttnam' at the20th Rome Film Festival.[37]
A stage musical based on the film premiered at theRoyal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh in 2019.[38] The musical featured music and lyrics by Knopfler[39] (writer of the film soundtrack) and a book byBill Forsyth (original film screenwriter and director) andDavid Greig,[40] and was directed byJohn Crowley.[41]
