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‘Our Hero, Balthazar’ Review: Oscar Boyson’s Audacious Drama About Fake Empathy, School Shooters and How the Online World Connects to Both
Oscar Boyson's audacious drama about fake empathy, school shooters and how the online world connects to both.
Balthazar, played in a hipster fade and with a puppy-dog scowl by Jaeden Martell, is a New York rich kid with a life coach and a divorced mother (Jennifer Ehle) who’s too busy throwing political cocktail parties to pay him much attention. “Our Hero, Balthazar” turns into a screw-loose buddy movie: “The Edgelord and the Incel.” And what makes it work is that as good in a cool-façade way as Jaeden Martell is, Asa Butterfield acts with a socio-bro attitude camouflaging a raw sorrow that seems to slice open the dark heart of what now drives so many lonely young men. Solomon is as much of a “psycho” as Balthy (he gets fired for harassing the young woman he works with at a roadside convenience store), yet Butterfield, the former child star of Scorsese’s “Hugo,” makes him sympathetic by letting the character’s tragedy shine through.
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