Local Hero [VHS] [1983]

Peter Riegert is cast as MacIntyre, a young Houston exec of Knox Oil, packed off by CEO Felix Happer, colorfully played by Burt Lancaster, to Furness, a remote Scottish coastal village. His mission - to buy the town and adjacent beach, thus acquiring the land upon which Knox Oil plans to build a sprawling facility to receive North Sea crude. On site, MacIntyre finds himself dealing with a canny townsman named Urquhart, delightfully portrayed by Denis Lawson. (Urquhart, with his wholesomely sexy wife, owns the town's only hotel and only pub, and is apparently the local gentleman of influence when arranging matters of such great import.) Unforeseen complications in the negotiations arise, necessitating Happer's clattering arrival by helicopter late in the game. As it turns out, title to the village is of no use without the beach, and the latter is owned by a crusty, old beachcomber named, as luck and bloodlines would have it, Knox.

LOCAL HERO exhibits that quirkiness of characters and circumstance that has made British comedies so appealing. Eccentricities abound. Take, for example, the sleepy hamlet's only street, which is always deserted except whenever MacIntyre needs to cross it, at which time he is almost run down by a yokel whizzing by on a motor scooter. Or, the Soviet fishing boat captain that makes periodic, illegal landfall at Furness to check on his very non-communist financial investments made through Urquhart. And, the baby that seems to belong to nobody, but is unconcernedly cared for by the town at large. Furness seems just ever so slightly askew - but only if you're an outsider.

The fictional community of Furness is actually Pennan, north of Aberdeen on Moray Firth, and the Furness beach is actually Camusdarach Beach 150 miles distant on the western coast. Notwithstanding the filmmaker's magic in rearranging geography, anyone who has visited the breathtakingly beautiful shores of northern Scotland will understand the changes that occur in MacIntyre as he becomes exposed to the serene grandeur of his environment. What is the allure of Houston, or any other soulless place, when one could walk barefoot on Scottish sands under magnificent sunsets and collect seashells? The ending, which is supremely satisfying, should give anyone involved in a day-to-day rat race second thought about what gives life meaning.

If you remember the red telephone box, watching the American, Mac, trying to make a transatlantic call with a fist full of ten pence pieces will amuse. It's gentle observational comedy of the highest order, interspersed with moments of pure slapstick.

Well worth a watch, even if at times it seems a bit dated.