“HESHER.” | Dramedy
R. 1 hour 45 minutes. At the Mayan.
T.J. needs a friend. His mom has just died in a traffic accident. His dad, Paul, has withdrawn into a haze of tranquilizers and group-therapy blather. His grandma is kind but housebound.
The school bully likes pushing him facedown onto urinal cakes. The woman in his life, Nicole, a nice 20-something grocery clerk with self-esteem issues, can’t fathom that a 13-year-old could have a life-and-death crush on her.
T.J. needs a friend. But what he gets is a dirtbag heavy-metal nihilist named Hesher. It’s his lucky day, sort of.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is riveting as the title character, an ambiguous, intriguing mentor/menace. We never learn a thing about this lank-haired, hot-tempered force of nature. He shows up whenever T.J. is feeling especially stressed, like Charlie Manson’s notion of a guardian angel.
For T.J., floundering in a swamp of loss at the beginning of adolescence, a blast of rebellious male energy is what the doctor ordered. Hugs can’t teach you everything.
Writer/director Spencer Susser deserves credit for pushing the coming-of-age story in the direction of black comedy. In the process of toughening up T.J., Hesher scars the kid a bit but leaves him more healed than he found him. It’s Mary Poppins meets Charles Bukowski.
The cast is noteworthy. Rainn Wilson plays Paul straight and sad; Natalie Portman (who produced the film) is touching as geeky cashier Nicole; John Carroll Lynch is gruff but human as the auto- junkyard owner who becomes T.J.’s adversary; and Piper Laurie is a gust of pure, weary love as the boy’s grandmother. Devin Brochu gives the much-battered T.J. the right mix of stubborn pride and wounded self-pity.
And Gordon-Levitt is stellar as the anarchic, tattooed metalhead. His character will stick with you, leaving an impression as raw and visceral as a cigarette burn.
