Our Hero, Balthazar review – a darkly comic satire of incel culture and gun violence

The Guardian’s review describes *Our Hero, Balthazar* as a dark, abrasive black comedy that satirises incel culture, online performance, self-help rhetoric and America’s relationship with gun violence. The film follows Balthazar, a wealthy Manhattan teenager who performs grief over school shootings on social media, then becomes involved with an online troll he suspects may be planning an attack. According to the review, the film matters less as a conventional thriller than as a pointed commentary on how attention-seeking activism, alienation and fascination with violence can feed off one another.

The suspected troll, Solomon, is revealed to be a Texan teenager living with his grandmother, and the pair develop an unsettling, homoerotic friendship shaped by political and cultural differences between liberal New York and conservative small-town America. The review praises the energetic direction and especially the performances of Jaeden Martell and Asa Butterfield, arguing that their dynamic captures a broader sense of American dysfunction. It also notes weaknesses: some satire is seen as too obvious, the film takes aim at too many subjects at once, and its ending is described as strained, though it still contains sharp comic moments.