You know those Sundance movies about achy-breaky families that either heal or don’t, and you couldn’t much care either way? Imagine one of those rewritten by Beavis & Butt-head.
The hilarious heavy-metal black comedy “Hesher,” starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a barechested heavy metal juvenile delinquent, is about what happens when grief gets a wedgie from the friendly neighborhood anarchist. To me it looks like a big fat hairy Sundance hit.
The title character, Gordon-Levitt’s window-shatterin’, car-bombin’, diving-board-barbecuin’ greasy-haired outlaw, has no place to live so he invites himself into the home of a clueless weakling he happens to meet, a little kid whose family (dad is a catatonic Rainn Wilson, granny is a spacey Piper Laurie) is reeling from an unspecified catastrophe. The runt (Devin Brochu, who seems to be about 10) is getting harassed by a local bully when Hesher (sort of) plays My Bodyguard to him. Meanwhile, a supermarket cashier (Natalie Portman) sees the boy getting beaten up and offers him a ride home, sparking a helpless crush on the kid’s part.
Gordon-Levitt is top-notch as the metalhead, a guy who saunters into the little kid’s house, strips down to his underwear to wash his clothes and then, discovering there’s nothing good on TV, climbs up a utility pole to steal some cable porn channels in his Jockeys. Everything Hesher does is bizarre, antisocial and yet somehow brilliant, maybe especially his loopy conversations with Piper Laurie’s kindly but out-of-it grandma, but in the final act the movie takes a big gamble on pulling heartstrings. This could be what puts the movie over the top and gives it the emotional standing to be a big commercial hit — to me the pic has Fox Searchlight DNA — or it could turn off critics who are always ready to pounce if they think they’re being manipulated. The final act worked terrifically with me, though, and I laughed throughout the comic scenes. Piper Laurie could merit awards-season consideration (the scene in which she and Hesher smoke pot is terrific, without lapsing into stoner cliches) and debut writer-director Spencer Susser has put himself on the map with his superb script and tight direction. “Hesher” is going to attract a lot of entirely justified attention.