My 150 Favorite Films - #4

Local Hero (1983)

The always reliably excellent Peter Riegert stars in this bit of a shaggy dog story as an oil company executive sent to a remote village in Scotland in order to acquire the town for the purposes of building an oil refinery. Burt Lancaster stars as his obstreperous boss, who sends him because he thinks he is Scottish, having a Scottish-sounding name (MacIntyre). What he finds there, turns out to be lovably eccentric villagers, and a picturesque town far removed from his life back home in Texas. The low-key approach, from writer-director Bill Forsyth, makes for a charming, disarming, quirky and quite engaging little movie, for anyone to enjoy.