One of the best films ever made - Local Hero - was on the Freeview channel Film Four tonight. I hadn't seen it for ages and thoroughly enjoyed watching it again.
For those who haven't seen it - and it's astonishing to think a quarter of a century has passed since it was made - Burt Lancaster plays an oil billionaire Happer who sends colleague Mac to a remote Scottish village to secure the property rights for an oil refinery they want to build. Mac teams up with Danny and starts the negotiations, the locals are keen to get their hands on the 'Silver Dollar' and can't believe their luck. However a local hermit and beach scavenger, Ben Knox, lives in a shack on the crucial beach which he also owns. Happer is more interested in the Northern Lights and Danny in a surreal girl with webbed feet, Marina. Mac is used to a Houston office with fax machines but is forced to negotiate on Bens terms.
It's great seeing the likes of Scots actors Peter Capaldi - now famous for his incessant swearing in the fabulous political comedy The Thick of It - Denis Lawson (uncle of Ewan McGregor) and Alex Norton in early roles. The sadly departed Fulton Mackay is also there as is John Gordon Sinclair, better known for Gregory's Girl (by the same director, Bill Forsyth) And an early role for a young Jonathan Watson, now the star of the football comedy Only an Excuse.
Add the emotion tugging theme music from Mark Knopfler and you have a truly fabulous film. Just the thing to cheer up a miserable Monday!
2 comments:
I love that film too. Bill Forsyth came and showed it to the First Scottish Student Drama Festival that I helped to organise in the early 1980s. It was great to hear some of his thoughts on the film. A very nice man.
I've never seen that movie before, I'll have to rent it. Always love Burt Lancaster movies.
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