An Enthrallingly Uncomfortable Buddy Movie

There are movies designed to make you uncomfortable, and there are movies where even uttering the premise makes you uncomfortable. Our Hero, Balthazar, is both. Written and directed by Oscar Boyson, the log-line is as follows: To impress a girl, a wealthy teenager who makes videos about the horrors of gun violence for social media validation, attempts to stop a school shooting by traveling to Texas and becoming friends with the would-be shooter.

If, reader, that brief pitch made you feel queasy, it means you’re still human. Outside of the shocking premise, what might surprise the unsuspecting viewer is that Our Hero, Balthazar, is a complex, whip-smart, empathetic work that is uncommonly perceptive on topics such as wealth inequality, growing isolation, and obsession with violence in the United States. 

Jaeden Martell (Arcadian, Y2K) is utterly repulsive, yet mesmerizing, as the title character. An affluent youth whose mother (Jennifer Ehle) supplies him with everything he could possibly want, including a life coach, played by a hilarious, against type Noah Centineo (Warfare), Balthazar finds emptiness in his existence. Therefore, he goes online and fake-cries into his phone to viewers online, begging for stricter gun laws in the wake of various school shootings. The way Martell can shift from a full-on convincing sob into a blank expression in a moment flat is as bone-chilling as Balthazar’s assertion that he makes these videos to feel “a part of something”. 

Writer and director Oscar Boyson refuses to let us look away. 

Between his sickening hobby of inserting himself into other people’s pain and his borderline harassment of his classmate/crush Eleanor (Pippa Knowles), Balthazar is a uniquely unpleasant character to build a movie around. Nevertheless, what Oscar Boyson’s screenplay and direction are doing with his character is downright brave. Our Hero, Balthazar forces the audience to sit with how the pervasive gun violence, specifically the way it’s broadcast 24/7, can breed maladjusted youth who become obsessed with the violence that they’re supposed to be disgusted by. 

When Balthazar is messaged by a stranger who claims he’s going to shoot up a school, with footage of a recent shooting attached, a sort of wicked smile creeps up on his face. As he goes to Texas to meet the man named Solomon (Asa Butterfield), he becomes fascinated by him. On paper, Solomon, who Asa Butterfield utterly melts into, looks to be exactly the stereotype of someone who would be expected to commit such an atrocity. The thick country accent, lack of friends, and obsession with guns; Balthazar sees him as his perfect monster. 

What Our Hero, Balthazar does with Solomon is unexpected. Butterfield, in tandem with Boyson’s precise writing and direction, pulls off the difficult task of making Solomon a deeply empathetic individual. Although he can be a bit of a creep, Solomon is a victim of long-standing abuse by his father (Chris Bauer), works hard to take care of his ailing grandmother (Becky Ann Baker), and desires connection more than anything.

Asa Butterfield creates an unlikely empathetic character. 

With his severe poverty and the growing suspicion that he isn’t actually planning on enacting any violence and is just an internet edgelord, albeit an extreme one, Solomon slowly endears himself to the audience and to Balthazar. One thing that cannot be taken away from Oscar Boyson’s film is that it feels utterly captivating throughout. Seeing a character who is already difficult to swallow, such as Balthazar, undergoing a journey deep into the heart of darkness is exciting because it feels so dangerous.

There’s considerable tension throughout, not just over what Solomon or Balthazar might do, but also because it is fully, almost recklessly, committed to viewing these characters, who one wouldn’t even dare to think of outside of pariahs, creeps, or monsters, as human beings. 

Our Hero, Balthazar makes us stare into what we don’t want to confront. In one case, we find a surprising humanity. In the other, we find a deep sickness well-hidden. It would be criminal for me to say which descriptor fits which character.

Our Hero, Balthazar shines a light on the need for connection. 

At a certain point, Our Hero, Balthazar becomes a sort of twisted buddy comedy. Somehow, these two complete outcasts found each other and get to act like the world’s most unstable siblings. With a lot of lip service given to the “male loneliness epidemic” these days, Boyson’s film makes the obvious supposition that if a lot of these shut-in young men simply talked to other human beings, they might be happier. Contrary to its bleak backdrop, for a stretch, Our Hero, Balthazar feels really sweet. It made me feel bad for thinking it was really sweet, which in turn made the film feel all the more invigorating.

Not all good things can last. At a certain point, things go sideways in Our Hero, Balthazar, and our main characters come into conflict. Boyson does a great job at flipping the dynamics in such a methodical manner that a character who at the start you might’ve viewed as a monster might now be seen as an unequivocal victim of circumstance, or vice versa.

Without giving too much away, Our Hero, Balthazar, makes a salient point about those who choose violence through their own intention versus those who are pushed into violence. All the while also questioning whether or not the pervasive violence essentially beamed into our brains isn’t somewhat to blame. 

Our Hero, Balthazar holds a mirror up to the damaging effects of sensationalized violence. 

The elephant in the room here is that this is a film about two white men with violent and/or creepy dispositions, and the movie wants us to deeply consider their inner worlds. In this day and age, with the rise of mass shootings, general violence, and anti-social behavior, often perpetrated by white men, it is very understandable why someone would write this movie off entirely.

However, Our Hero, Balthazar‘s intention is to examine a deep sickness within the United States, using two very familiar archetypes of perpetrators of violence, to do so. Its final moment is deliciously disturbing, underlining how a lot of our culture will continue to deal with the growing violence, even those who are directly affected by it. The literal final five seconds of the film are abrupt, nihilistic, and the perfect dark joke to end things on. 

In other words, the discomfort is precisely the point. Our Hero, Balthazar holds a mirror up to a culture that sensationalizes real-life violence and explores not only what that constant media cycle does to a young mind, but also the circumstances that might cause someone to commit that violence. Oscar Boyson has made a film that’s shocking, bizarrely funny, clear-eyed, and abrasive in all the right ways. Even though I’m not sure if I ever want to watch it again, Our Hero, Balthazar is necessary cinema for our times.

Our Hero, Balthazar opens in New York City on March 27, with plans to expand to further markets.