100
San Francisco Examiner by Barbara Shulgasser
This movie is a pleasure, an entertainment and an admirable artistic achievement.
A Self-Made Hero (Un héros très discret)
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- France
- 1996
- · 107m
Director
Jacques Audiard
Cast
Mathieu Kassovitz,
Anouk Grinberg,
Sandrine Kiberlain,
Albert Dupontel,
Jean-Louis Trintignant,
Nadia Barentin
Genre
Drama,
War
Albert Dehousse longs to be a war hero but is denied military service because his mother is a war widow. When he finds out that his parents were Nazi collaborators, Albert leaves his home to join the French Resistance, passing himself off as a hero despite his sheltered life.
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What are critics saying?
90
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Smart and provocative.
90
Variety by Lisa Nesselson
This sure-footed, deeply ironic comedy about an impostor who rises through the ranks is rock-solid entertainment with an appealing edge.
88
The Seattle Times by John Hartl
This is a confident, playful film that skewers both the amorality of the central character and, less comfortably, the gullibility of the people he so easily dupes. [5 Dec 1997, p.G5]
88
Boston Globe by Jay Carr
Ingeniously rising above the ongoing culture war between France and the United States, Jacques Audiard's A Self-Made Hero piquantly offers a distinct subtext for each country. [3 Oct 1997, p.D7]
78
Austin Chronicle by Russell Smith
[A] distinctive, thought-provoking film.
75
New York Daily News by Jami Bernard
Jacques Audiard's amusingly stinging A Self-Made Hero toys with the subjectivity of historical truth by presenting one Albert Dehousse (Mathieu Kassovitz), loser, cipher, liar. But a brilliant liar. [12 Sept 1997, p.44]
75
TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox
Audriad's film articulates an uncomfortably familiar vision of a nation desperate enough to believe its own lies, where the copy is inevitably much better than the real thing and heroes are only as genuine as one needs them to be.
75
San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Stack
Director Jacques Audiard beautifully lays out the story of a charming nobody named Albert who becomes a master of the half- smile and nonchalant gestures of deceit. But the story is also a cogent metaphor for French collaboration with the Nazis.
75
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
His film is more subtle and wide-reaching, the story of a man for whom everything is equally unreal, who distrusts his own substance so deeply that he must be somebody else to be anybody at all.
70
The New York Times by Janet Maslin
But this miracle of self-invention has more virtue in the abstract than it does on screen.
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