Local Anesthetic

Local Hero was recommended for years. A good friend told me several times that it was one of her favorite films. It was critically acclaimed, beautifully photographed, and dead boring. This was the kind of film that gave critics a bad name, before Mamet and Tarentino made moviegoers hate critics for new reasons. Yes, if you love Scottish travelogues, you may like this film. And it promises all kinds of bittersweet character development, but it never delivers.

Made in 1983, just as Hollywood was getting on the environmental soapbox, it portrays a monster oil company attempting to purchase a village on the Scottish coast to build an oil refinery. Unexpectedly, all the residents are delighted. I kind of thought this was going to be a David vs. Goliath contest, between hardy, honest fishermen and a big, bad corporation. Not at all - Burt Lancaster, supposedly the villain as the oil company CEO, is an eccentric engaged in alternative "insult" therapy and interested only in astronomy. He's first shown napping in a board meeting. Peter Riegert, sent to arrange the purchase from the villagers, plays along deftly and sincerely, slowly falling in love with this small, quiet village and its lovely views.

But it doesn't work. I'm no greenie, but even I would hate to see a picturesque fishing village spoiled by petroleum and chemical processing. Even in the early 1980's, surely the Scottish government would have had something to say about an international corporation building a major refinery along 3 miles of its pristine coastline. And then there's the seals. Nearby, there's a bay for endangered seals. Are you trying to tell me there wouldn't have noise from the local treehuggers and biologists about the seals?

I guess I could get happy about the reality of the Scottish fishermen and villagers in this film: they're dreadfully poor, and very happy about the millions they're about to receive. They're going to move elsewhere, and don't seem to care that their beautiful village will soon be a poisonous oil refinery.