Directed by Lamont Johnson. Written by Bill Kerby.
You won’t find a lot of opening shots that distill their movies better than the one in The Last American Hero: a misty morning overlooking a graveyard at rest until a Ford Mustang rips past, spitting gravel as it snarls its way down back country roads, autumn foliage rustling in its wake.
This is country country. Not apple picking, flannel, and pumpkin patches, but instead rednecks, moonshine, missing teeth, junk on front lawns, and motor oil stains everywhere. Life’s rusted to a halt, and whatever prospects brought people here long enough to die are long gone. But there’s one holdout who’s still showing signs of life.
His name is Elroy Jackson Jr. and he’s got a knack for driving fast. He employs those skills driving his father’s homemade whiskey to where it needs to be, playing hooky with cops-in-chase and barreling past roadblocks. He’s good and he knows it, but the thing about these hollows is everybody knows everybody, so cops don’t really need to catch Elroy, they just need to go raid his daddy’s house, break up the makeshift still and take Elroy Sr. in.
With his dad in the can for the foreseeable future, and a lawyer telling him cash can make him comfortable, Elroy’s got to make it fast. The obvious move for Jr. to do so is racing. It may be backwater NASCAR, but it beats running hooch.
The Last American Hero is a particular piece of Americana. It’s not glorifying any of it by a long shot, but it celebrates the fierce independent streak that the U.S. so loves to lionize, especially when it’s found in anti-establishment mavericks who resemble a people’s champion. Junior’s that kind of champion: loyal to family and friends, of the land, and simple in his pursuits, tunnel-visioned about doing the only thing he knows how and being the best at it. Helps that thing is something everyone in the South is passionate about: fast cars.
Cast Jeff Bridges as Junior, who has the boyish looks and an honest brow, but whose piercing eyes and set jaw makes him a man, and you know who to root for in this showdown with the money-grubbing big business of commercialized racing. There’s dissatisfaction with what America’s become and its capitalistic mechanisms, but endless love for the average people caught in it. The question becomes whether Junior can win and stay true to who he is.
So it doesn’t quite bleed red-white-and-blue, but it does bleed high-octane gasoline. It’s a movie about cars, and the roar of engines provides the music. If you’re one who wants to watch real cars do real racing, then The Last American Hero is a no-brainer. There are real spin-outs, real tiresmoke, and crunching, real crashes. It’s a highlight reel for stuntmen’s guts. Beyond mortal fear, there’s also an undeniable thrill to watching a classic muscle car tear through the countryside and the yell of its motor echoing out through the valley.
John Denver’s “Take Me Home (Country Roads)” is nostalgia for the South set to music. A song about a particular way of life that’s as genuine as the grass on the ground, and an ode to the occupations far removed from urbanity’s corruptive pleasures. Moonshine, coal, rolling hills, and the deep-seated feeling this is where you belong, and there’s no place like it on earth, no matter what anyone might say.
The Last American Hero is cut from the same cloth. A song of the land and the values it supposedly fosters, and while ideas of the South present very differently today than it did back then, here it’s a simple case of a devoted son whose considerable talent is his only way out from underneath economic headwinds. Add some flash to trigger your senses in the shape of stunts, manipulating money men, fast cars and faster women, and the thrill ride is complete.
Mikkel Frederiksen 