Reviews

O Heroi | The Hero

3.0 stars

By PETER KEOUGH | February 9, 2006

3.0 Stars

HOMERIC Vitório has it more difficult than most.

No veteran demobbed after wartime has it easy, but the case of is downright Homeric. Snatched up at age 15 to fight in the Angolan War of Independence, he serves for 20 years before losing a leg to a land mine. Back home he’s given a medal, a pair of crutches, and a home on the streets. A kindly doctor pulls strings for a prosthesis; a street punk steals it. Director Zézé Gamboa unloads this misery with a matter-of-factness and a lack of sentiment that intensify the authenticity and heartbreak. He interweaves Vitório’s plight with the lives of other Angolans: Manu, a troubled 12-year-old whose soldier father never came home; Joana, Manu’s teacher, an upper-class woman trying to make a difference; and Judite, a prostitute who befriends Vitório. Uniting them is the unlikely fetish of Vitório’s artificial leg, and the ensuing crossed destinies surpass the contrivances of Crash. (O herói is the opening-night film of this year’s African Film Festival.)

Topics: Reviews , Science and Technology, Technology, War and Conflict, More

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Where To Follow Me
Talking Politics | March 24, 2013 at 11:09 AM

Mo Takes His Turn
March 21, 2013 at 12:59 PM

[Q&A] KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko on art, Columbine and having balls
On The Download | March 18, 2013 at 3:22 PM

See this film series: The Belmont World Film Series @ Studio Cinema in Belmont
Outside The Frame | March 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM

See this film: This is Spinal Tap [with post-film talk by expert from Acoustical Society of America] @ the Coolidge
March 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM

ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH

BUFFET DINING: THE 15TH BOSTON UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL | March 19, 2013
"Copraphagy" is a key word at this year's Boston Underground Film Festival at the Brattle.

REVIEW: GINGER & ROSA | March 19, 2013
Sally Potter likes to mess around with form and narrative.

UNDERGROUND CINEMA: THE 12TH BOSTON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL | March 12, 2013
This year's Boston Turkish Film Festival includes works in which directors ponder the relationships between the secular and the religious, between men and women, and between destiny and identity.

REVIEW: A GLIMPSE INSIDE THE MIND OF CHARLES SWAN III | March 12, 2013
In Roman Coppola's sophomoric second feature (his 2001 debut CQ was promising), Charlie Sheen shows restraint as the titular asshole, a dissolute ad designer and solipsistic whiner who's mooning over the loss of his latest love.

REVIEW: UPSIDE DOWN | March 14, 2013
Had Ed Wood Jr. directed Fritz Lang's Metropolis , he couldn't have achieved the earnest dopiness of Juan Solanas's sci-fi allegory — nor the striking images.