Hesher

Directed by Spencer Susser

(R)

**

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Fans of “that nice young man” from (500) Days of Summer are in for a “body blow” with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s “giddi­ly unhinged” performance in Hesher, said Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. Gordon-Levitt stars as a long-haired, tattooed squatter who insinuates himself into the home of T.J., a 10-year-old boy reeling from his mother’s recent death. T.J.’s father (Rainn Wilson) has “sunk into a hole of grief on the couch,” and his grandmother (Piper Laurie) is slowly losing her marbles. So it falls to the fearsome Hesher to offer life lessons to the wimpy T.J. by way of “blowing up cars in people’s driveways.” Just why T.J.’s family doesn’t call the cops on this “violent wild man” is never explained, said Rex Reed in The New York Observer. Instead, the script seems “hell-bent on revealing a sensitivity” in Hesher that plainly isn’t there. It’s true this black comedy loses its way, said Colin Covert in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. But the noteworthy cast, including co-producer Natalie Portman in a supporting role, makes an impression. Gordon-Levitt does even more: He’s “as raw and visceral as a cigarette burn.”