Our Hero, Balthazar Review
Our Hero, Balthazar (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by Oscar Boyson, written by Ricky Camilleri and Oscar Boyson and starring Jaeden Martell, Asa Butterfield, Chris Bauer, Pippa Knowles, Danny McCarthy, Jennifer Ehle, Avan Jogia, Bobby Potts, Becky Ann Baker, Anna Baryshnikov, Noah Centineo, David M. Raine and Will River.
Our Hero, Balthazar is one of the more intense dramas to come out these days, and the film features two remarkable performances from its lead actors, Jaeden Martell and Asa Butterfield. With the success of the movie, The Drama, the topic has come up in regards to how to handle the theme of school shootings in a contemporary movie. Our Hero, Balthazar makes a solid attempt at using the topic to prove points about how troubled families create disturbed kids, who talk about things that are far beyond their comprehension in order to impress people. Filmmaker Oscar Boyson is to be credited for exploring difficult subject matters fearlessly despite the movie’s minor tonal and stylistic flaws.
Martell portrays Balthazar, a student in New York City, who lives with a dedicated mother (Jennifer Ehle). Balthazar leads a charmed life, but is fascinated by dark topics like school shootings, especially when he sees a guy online named Solomon (Asa Butterfield) talking about the issue in frightening ways. Meanwhile, at school, Balthazar tries to talk to a girl named Eleanor (well played by Pippa Knowles) during a school shooting drill. She eventually seems like she may not be such a good idea for Balthazar to pursue, especially later on in the plot when he calls to tell her he helped stop a potential school shooting by meeting Solomon in person, which he actually does.
Solomon is a disturbed individual, whose father, Beaver (Chris Bauer), is an ex-porn star. Solomon lives with his grandmother (Becky Ann Baker), and has a life that is undermined by his financial difficulties as the grandma can’t even afford their rent. The plot kicks in when Balthazar tries to make his voice sound like a woman’s in order to get Solomon’s attention. Balthazar shows up in Texas where Solomon lives, and, somehow, befriends him. However, things get more complicated thanks to Solomon’s personal troubles, which will possibly help prevent him from doing a real school shooting, no matter how much Solomon glorifies doing one online to get attention from others.
This film focuses on the need to know people in real life (IRL) in order to avoid becoming antisocial on the internet, but also debunks that theory in some ways as the storyline moves forward. This picture is smart in the way it develops its interesting story. Balthazar is a complicated character, and it’s not easy to guess his next move as one wonders if Balthazar is merely obsessed with Solomon or if he begins to care about him along the way, knowing all his real world difficulties.
Our Hero, Balthazar does get a little heavy-handed as one may expect it would. Since Balthazar travels a good distance to meet Solomon, one knows that Balthazar wants something to happen, even though he does try to talk Solomon out of doing things that could forever alter his life at intervals in the film. Solomon goes into a convenience store and it seems he has a troubled history with the female clerk working there (Anna Baryshnikov), proving his inability to maintain friendships and/or relationships.
Great ideas are explored in Our, Hero Balthazar. This movie is dark and has the good sense not to try to turn it into a movie about the friendship between Balthazar and Solomon in which they would become good friends. That’s a potential Hollywood movie, not this one. As the story leads us to believe, something will happen that will most likely be very dire in this picture. Unfortunately, the film becomes a bit of a let-down in the last moments despite its very promising build-up to that conclusion.
Martell and Butterfield are both superb in their roles. Solomon is something of a lost cause, and even if there is hope for salvation, Balthazar may have other ideas than actually trying to help Solomon. For one, Balthazar wouldn’t mind impressing Eleanor (or the world) by taking out the supposed school shooter and, thus, saving lives in the interim.
Our Hero, Balthazar has a tight script so when the movie gets down to the wire, one was probably hoping for a more satisfying resolve to this very frightening film’s screenplay than the one that is revealed at the end. It’s still a better film than The Drama because it doesn’t shy away from the ideas it proposes, and it doesn’t oversimplify them in the name of sheer entertainment value.
It’s easy to predict that something will occur to either Balthazar or Solomon as the story progresses. That goes without saying. In support, Bauer is very impressive as well as the dad who steered Solomon away by making some very bad decisions in his life. Meanwhile, Ehle, as the mom of Balthazar, gets some scenes to shine in, and has a distinct role in the proceedings if one looks closely at her character’s actions early on in the movie.
At the end, there are more questions posed in Our Hero, Balthazar than there are answers provided for the viewer. Still, it’s hard to not recommend the film as movies like this can be thought-provoking and inspire conversations about them afterwards. This film was rejected by South by Southwest and the Sundance film festivals, but found a home at last year’s Tribeca. It’s a movie unafraid of taking risks and succeeds on its own merits as a powerful piece of film-making.
Rating: 7/10
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