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Our Hero, Balthazar (Film Review)

There’s an active-shooter drill at Balthazar’s private school, and while the other kids are stretched out on the floor under fake blood, he starts flirting with Eleanor. You see, murder, fear, someone else’s pain, is all becomes part of his little show. Balthazar “Balthy” Malone (Jaeden Martell) is a rich Manhattan teenager who spends his nights crying into his phone. The tears are real enough. He can just switch them off the second he stops recording. 

 

 

When Eleanor (Pippa Knowles), the politically serious girl at school, starts talking about gun control, Balthy suddenly cares about that too. Or pretends to. Then an online stranger begins sending him violent messages, and Balthy decides he can stop a school shooting, become a hero and win Eleanor over at the same time.

The stranger is Solomon (Asa Butterfield), a broke, angry young man living in a Texas trailer with his grandmother Elaine (Becky Ann Baker). He works at a convenience store, frightens his coworker and keeps trying to impress a father who barely sees him as a son. 

That father, Beaver (Chris Bauer), sells junk testosterone powder. Spewing verbal garbage about becoming a “real man.” Solomon talks like a killer online because it gets a reaction. Balthy mistakes the act for a genuine plan, catfishes him with an artificial female identity and travels to Texas expecting to save the day. Instead, the two start hanging around together.

Director Oscar Boyson and co-writer Ricky Camilleri began developing the film after the 2022 Uvalde massacre, struck by reports that the gunman had revealed his intentions to someone online who didn’t believe him. It’s a horrible question: What are you supposed to do when some stranger sends you a threat that sounds like the same empty garbage people post every day?

Christopher Messina’s camera stays close and twitchy, while James William Blades’ electronic score keeps poking at the nerves. Martell plays Balthy as a kid who may have feelings somewhere in there but can’t tell the difference between having one and putting one on display. His spoiled awkwardness often makes him frightening.

Butterfield is unrecognizable under bleached hair and a ragged Texas accent, making Solomon loud, pathetic, funny and sad, many times all at once. He isn’t secretly harmless, but he isn’t the monster Balthy wants him to be either. He’s lonely and Butterfield nails the notes seamlessly. 

Solomon clings to Balthy because this strange rich kid bothered to come looking for him, even if the whole friendship began as a lie. There’s an intimacy between them that neither boy knows what to do with, which manifests through wrestling, threats and gunplay because those are the only languages they’ve bothered to learn.

The class difference matters more than the red-state-versus-blue-state stuff. Both are ignored by their fathers. Both build fake versions of themselves. But Balthy can treat Texas like a weekend experiment and go home to a Manhattan apartment, family money and people paid to worry about him. 

Solomon has an ailing grandmother, unpaid bills and Beaver, rendering him unable to walk away. The film sees that, though it occasionally gets distracted trying to cover every poisoned corner of modern life at once, whether it’s guns, social media, masculinity, artificial intelligence, political theater, rich parents and online radicalization. 

Eleanor is pushed aside once she has served her purpose, Jennifer Ehle doesn’t get enough to do as Balthy’s mother, and the last stretch keeps reaching for another ending after the real emotional blow has already landed.