Our Hero, Balthazar review – a darkly comic satire of incel culture and gun violence

‘I think it’s nice to be part of a community” is how Manhattan rich kid Balthazar (Jaeden Martell) justifies his favourite hobby: posting tear-soaked videos in which he sociopathically pretends to be one of the horde of American youth lamenting the national epidemic of gun violence. Longtime Safdie brothers producer Oscar Boyson brings that kind of scabrous attitude – not just to school shootings, but to social media, “incel”, self-help and US salesman cultures – in this squirming, energetically directed black comedy that is reminiscent of the take-no-prisoners libertarian satire of Jason Reitman’s early films.

Balthazar is trying to impress his crush, Eleanor (Pippa Knowles), with whom he enthusiastically plays the role of the victim in school-shooting drills. After he blows his chances by attempting to make out with her while showing her raw footage of the latest massacre, he ups his game. Preventing the next bloodbath would truly prove his commitment to the cause, and a trollish incel called deathdealer_16, who has been goading him in his chat, seems as if he might be ready to blow. Catfishing him by posing as a comely maiden of the internet, Balthazar sets up an IRL rendezvous.

Deathdealer_16 turns out to be Solomon (Asa Butterfield), a Texan living in a trailer with his grandma, none too pleased to see Balthazar. But the two strike up a friendship, with Balthazar besotted by the shooting range, and Solomon eager to prove to the New Yorker there’s more to him than incel futility. Hitting a homoerotic pitch (“You wait to see the rest of what I’m packing,” says Solomon after revealing his glove box pistol), the film is at its strongest outlining this queasy interdependence. It’s a buddy-movie travesty of the mutual incomprehension and fascination between liberal and red-state America, suggesting that resignation to and glorification of gun violence aren’t so far apart.

Elsewhere, Boyson’s satire can be a bit blatant, as with the Magnolia-style motivational rallies run by Solomon’s silverback dad (Chris Bauer), and over-diffuse in its sheer number of targets. It is not without the odd good gag, though, like Balthazar cloning his mum’s voice to filth-chat Solomon, who sends dick pics of his porn star father in return.

The film scrabbles to come up with a suitably calamitous climax, though, and the focus settles too much on the incel. This is good news for Butterfield, who shows his range in shifting from schlubby haplessness to good ol’ boy posturing, but less so for Martell, equally impressive in his weaseliness. The two of them make an endearing pair: a bipartisan declaration of American incompetence.