Our Hero, Balthazar

It’s easy to look at school shooters and ask what went wrong, to plunder their social media histories and note their consumption of disturbing propaganda, to seek answers in their politics or their romantic disappointments. What’s tricky is reconciling that with the fact that millions of kids who don’t commit mass murder are also exposed to those things. How many more of them might go down that path but for a fluke of circumstance? Before the events that bring them to public attention, is there always a clear difference between heroes and villains?

Bathazar (Jaeden Martell) – or Balthy, as he prefers to be known – is a boy from a wealthy family who has every opportunity in life, but in other ways it’s not surprising if he’s a bit screwed up. His father is absent, taking no apparent interest in him. His mother is always too busy to pay him attention, and expects him to fit his needs around her social events. He is being raised by a paid ‘life coach’ whom he has no scruples about manipulating to an extent that is frankly abusive. There’s no-one around with the real authority to sort him out.

Adding to Balthy’s frustration is the fact that he goes to a school mostly attended by similarly privileged young people, so nobody thinks he’s special. When he gets talking online to another troubled youth, Solomon (Asa Butterfield), and realises that Solomon has been thinking about shooting up a school, he thinks his chance has come. If he could befriend Solomon, and change his mind, he could save children’s lives. A bad reaction from the female classmate he’s trying to get close to only reinforces his conviction, and before long he is travelling cross-country to make Solomon’s acquaintance in person.

A big hit with young audiences, who don’t get much satirical far aimed their way, Our Hero, Balthazar is in part a traditional cultue clash comedy, but finds some real darkness in the gulf between the US’ rich and poor. Balthy’s thoughtless remarks on first seeing Solomon’s home gradually subside as he takes stock of his surroundings and what all this means. It’s not that he develops much real sympathy – he doesn’t have a well-developed conscience – but he begins to understand that the life he has been used to is not a normal one.

Solomon may be obnoxious – early on we see him lose his job for creepy behaviour around a co-worker – but he’s not morally hopeless. He serves as a carer for his ailing grandmother and persists in trying to find ways to save them both from poverty. He too has an estranged father, however, and in his case that father, the self-styled Beaver Jackson (Chris Bauer, channelling a young Michael Ironside) is a manosphere supplement scammer not ashamed to screw over his own kin if it will make him a quick buck. Watching the two young men, you may well find your sympathies shifting – and you may wonder which of them, if either, is actually en route to becoming a killer.

What makes the film interesting is its willingness to combine simple satire with greater depth of character (at least where Solomon is concerned), and to bring real, generational social issues into proximity with those currently fashionable in opinion columns. This is also more challenging to pull off in both writing and directing, however, and the film is not entirely successful, despite a committed performance from Butterfield. There are times when it suffers from awkward pacing, and others when it strays a little too far into soap opera territory. Still, it remains watchable, and at a time when it’s getting rare to see filmmakers willing to take risks with this type of work, it deserves respect.

Reviewed on: 13 May 2026