Fromage Fridays #37: American Hero

The only thing more difficult than finding a Stephen Dorff movie is finding a good one.

I don’t know what exactly happened to this guy. Almost 20 years ago he seemed like one of those genuine diamonds in the rough; an up and coming charismatic leading man to be reckoned with and just when it seemed his career would happen, it just kind of didn’t.

A true shame, because watching “American Hero” feels like the limbo that perfectly encompasses what watching his career is like; solidly diverting, full of potential, and well meaning but unfortunately never quite soaring to even half of what it could be.

Dorff plays post-Katrina New Orleans resident Melvin, a man with telekinetic abilities and no life ambitions, content to waste his life away on alcohol, drugs, and partying with his crippled friend Lucille. This unfortunately does little to endear him to his ex-wife, whom he must impress if he hopes to ever have a meaningful relationship with his son whom he is blocked from visiting via court order for his debaucherous ways.

After a bit of soul searching, he makes the decision to train himself and his abilities to tackle the criminal element of his neighborhood in order to bring out the best in himself, make the town a better place for his son and eventually build bridges between him and his estranged ex, all while a documentary film crew captures the life of this person rumored to have extraordinary abilities amongst this community.

“American Hero” is a film that I really don’t want to be but so hard on because its heart is most definitely in all of the right places.

The glue that holds the film together is every aspect of Melvin’s everyday life. Stephen Dorff’s charisma shines as a lower class community man whose interests may not be entirely pure but is redeemed by the fact that his heart is. He loves his town and the people of it and were it not for his excellent chemistry with Eddie Griffin, playing his best friend and moral anchor, I can only imagine the final result would have been far less gratifying.

“American Hero” tries to be something of a deconstruction of the “real world people with powers concept” of the superhero genre, codified by properties such as “Heroes” or George R. R. Martin’s “Wild Cards.”

With his abilities kept secret from those outside of the community, being too outlandish to believe without seeing, while maintaining a low key lifestyle, governmental powers that be have no reason to seize Melvin, allowing him to his mundane life, using his powers for mundane purposes.

Watching a “superhero movie” focus this much on the human element of a character that is theoretically the exact opposite of the superhero archetype offers a refreshing take on the concept that is pretty engaging… for about the first 40 minutes or so.

Whether low budgeting or lack of imagination, it is at this point that the ultimate flaws of “American Hero” begin to settle in; specifically that the narrative arc of the film just isn’t very cohesive.

There a lot of scenes that ultimately amount to glorified padding that could have better utilized providing the film with the flair and adrenaline that it so desperately needed. Not helping matters is the documentary set up of the film that is more or less a giant waste at best and nonsensical at worst.

Its best utilization came when focusing on Melvin’s relationship with the community, stopping robberies and helping people in need from the outside perspective of these people who give performances just decent enough to be perfectly believable as ordinary Joes in a town that’s in a bit of a rough state. The double edged sword to this however is that the movie will frequently describe set pieces that you would rather be watching as opposed to what the cameras actually do focus on.

I really do want to give this movie an A for effort. After watching so much passionless dreck for this series, it’s not only refreshing but damn near genuinely rewarding to find something that clearly had a substantial amount of love put into its craftsmanship.

For that reason alone, “American Hero” is one of the more endearing Fromage picks I’ve come across in quite a while. However, the sad truth is that when stacked next to films of similar premises and similarly miniscule budgets such as “Chronicle” and “What We Do in the Shadows,” it just doesn’t quite go the extra mile that it should have.

2 Shatners out of 4

Bottom Line: Better than it has any right to be but not all that it could have been.