Our Hero, Balthazar: It’s All A Big Grift

Staff Writer Naomi Tan investigates the dynamic between performance and identity in Oscar Boyson’s Our Hero, Balthazar, pondering where one ends and the other begins.

Image taken from Deadline

“The movie’s about a sociopath who’s pretending to be a crybaby, and a crybaby pretending to be a sociopath…”

— Oscar Boyson

If I had a penny for every time there was a dark comedy about school shootings that came out in the span of a year, I’d have two pennies, which is not a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. Or perhaps not. Rather, it might just be time to confront the deceptively disguised source of motivation for this certain act of evil. Oscar Boyson cooks up a surprisingly sharp buddy film where an obscenely wealthy Balthazar Malone, eager to impress his activist crush, travels to Texas to stop a lonely Solomon from carrying out a school shooting. An audacious directorial debut, Boyson uses this absolutely outrageous premise as a playground to explore how the erroneous act of performance can devolve into very real consequences in Our Hero, Balthazar (2025).

Our Hero, Balthazar is built on the foundation of performativity, and Boyson shapes both of his main characters off of this pretense. Boyson warns the audience that, despite the film’s title, Balthazar is not meant to be our hero, because he is undeniably sociopathic. Jaeden Martell perfectly portrays Balthazar’s chilling inability to feel as he channels strange and over-exaggerated personas, be it a snotty crybaby or a righteous activist, alternating seamlessly between either one in order to get exactly what he wants. When his life coach tries to stop him from leaving for Texas, Balthazar sobs emptily while exclaiming that he molested him as a child. The claim comes out of left field and is absurdly hilarious, but ultimately covers up Balthazar’s willingness to weaponise his caricatures and play the victim.

Image taken from IndieWire

The film then turns Balthazar’s constant performance into an allegory for powerful lawmakers, so far removed from the grim reality of gun violence that it only becomes an obligation to seem morally sympathetic to the victims. Balthazar almost operates on a different plane of reality, both held up by the shelter of his wealth and his childlike self-centeredness. However, the very last thing Boyson wants is the audience to reduce him to just an ignorant brat. Balthazar is aware of the danger and the weight of his decisions, but still remains completely emotionally detached from it all, whether consciously or not. He brings his crush, Eleanor to his house, and makes the decision to project the gruesome security footage of a recent school shooting in Arkansas. Everything slows, and for a moment, Boyson lets you sit with the gut-wrenching sounds of carnage. That is until Balthazar leans in and tries to kiss her. Boyson’s decision to position him so absurdly out of touch with social norms makes his character much more sinister, as if the humanity and morality of Eleanor and the audience does not apply to him in the slightest. In fact, it becomes a cockblocking chore. 

And of course, the foil for the sheltered rich kid would be the rough and tumble, gun-obsessed Solomon Jackson. Unsurprisingly, Boyson displays Solomon as the average chronically-online loser incel, misunderstood and othered, giving him no other choice but to turn to violence, but Boyson inverts this stereotype and transforms it into a persona that he has to maintain. For Solomon, performance is also part of his everyday life, as he tries to be a good grandson and take care of his ill grandmother, but also wishes to be the dangerous outcast with the fate of life and death at his very hands. Without this facade, Solomon ceases to be of value. He is unable to hold a steady job, he cannot mend his relationship with his father, and he can’t even pay his rent. If not a school shooter, he is simply a failure.

Our Hero, Balthazar nearly recreates modern discourse on gun control, showing how policy makers normalise the issue rather than create a zero-tolerance environment when it comes to gun violence due to their need for proof in precedent cases. The bulk of Solomon’s desperation for companionship comes from his deadbeat father, Beaver, who recently comes back into his life, only to rope him into a testosterone supplement pyramid scheme. Solomon’s character is introduced as the physical manifestation of their slogan “suffering builds winning”. Of course, it is all a lie – the success of the company, the love Beaver has for his son, and the idea that being in horrible situations will be worth it. And yet, the slogan puts a smile on Solomon’s face, solidifying his reasons to continue performing.

Image taken from Cinedump

“…and when they actually get together in real life, the masks come off…You’re drawn to opposites whenever you’re telling a story, and then as you go on, you start to see how the two could complement each other.”

When these diametrically opposed characters meet, it becomes a recipe for chaos. Solomon, at first upset that Balthazar catfished him in order to meet him in real life, becomes ecstatic at the thought that someone would come all this way to find him – albeit under the impression that he was a dangerous school shooter that needed intervention. Solomon plays along, showing Balthazar his father’s guns and shooting plans, and teaches him how to obliterate his supplement supply he failed to sell, delighted at how much Balthazar seems to enjoy the activity. It's almost uncomfortably exciting, seeing how well they get along, as if the film tempts the audience to actually root for them. It lures them into the trap of hoping for a resolution, ignoring all the red flags in their relationship, effectively making the audience perform alongside the characters.

Our Hero, Balthazar questions how much of an identity you can assume without ultimately becoming it. Strangely, while both of them are trying so hard to be something they aren’t, Solomon’s innocence becomes much harder to prove than Balthazar’s malevolence. In a similar way, Boyson challenges the idea of reducing people in situations into their labels; like victim, or perpetrator, and how by overgeneralising these labels, eventually the identities of these people are what sticks, and every story homogenises into the same one, including this one.

After being unable to bring himself to do a mass shooting, Solomon begs Balthazar to stay but he simply berates him for being pathetic. As they fight, the rifle goes off, severely injuring Solomon’s grandmother in the living room. Balthazar flees with a pistol, and as Solomon tries to find him, Balthazar shoots him in the face. The story ends with violence and devastation at the hands of Balthazar, the very thing he set out to eliminate. His performance of care and concern for the issue ultimately created the opposite effect, and yet, he simply stares blankly, devoid of any feeling whatsoever. Supported by Solomon’s floorplans and evidence of the ‘school shooter’ story, Balthazar gets to be praised for his heroism, effectively reverting back to performance. He feeds the perfect copacetic narrative of victim and perpetrator. Guilty and innocent. Solomon dies a villain, a label that will stay long after his death, completely ripping him of any chance of forgiveness or reform.

This unsavory ending ends up being the most realistic one, reminding us of the danger that is performance, whether it be through activism or identity, because the more you try to suppress it, the more the monolith that is violence, builds. Boyson implores us to tear it down, step out of our comfort zones and confront the issue head on. We, too, must stop hiding behind the facade of a seemingly unequivocal problem. If we want things to change, we must get comfortable with the discomfort of truth.

IMAGES IN THIS ARTICLE ARE BEING USED UNDER FAIR USE GUIDELINES AS PART OF SINGAPORE'S COPYRIGHT ACT 2021.