An easygoing, gentle,and thoroughly successful comedy. Peter Riegert is an executive at the Houston firm of Knox Oil, in the employ of Mr. Happer himself, Burt Lancaster. Lancaster has a terrific plan to develop an oil refinery on the Scottish coast and sends Riegert there to negotiate the deal with the presumably naive villagers who own the beach and the land around it. Riegert runs into some genuinely weird Scottish folk and winds up in love with the place. Lancaster arrives to take over the arrangements himself but is entranced by the night sky and sends Riegert home, telling him, "I'm glad I got here in time to interrupt YOUR refinery caper." Riegert sadly goes back to Houston, having sampled for a few weeks the single-malt heaven of being at peace with himself.

That's the story. Pretty simple in itself. But Bill Forsyth, the writer and director, has imbued it with a fey quality suggestive of pixies and fairies and will o' the wisps. It's totally charming. I'll mention just a few features that are liable to catch the eye. Or the ear, for that matter. The Scottish accent in the end makes itself at home in your vestibular canals. "It will be the petrochemical capitol of the world" comes out as "It wheel be the pay-tro chemical capitol of the wurruld." The stunning Jenny Seagrove plays a mysterious rubber-suited SCUBA diver who is creating a biological map of the bay. Her would-be lover, kissing her rubber-suited knee, is only slightly put off when he notices that her toes are webbed, a sea-girl wreathed with seaweed red and brown. Two men are watching her walk away. "Nice pair of lungs on that," remarks one. "Yes, great assets," comments the other. This scene, like every other one, is played absolutely deadpan. Every utterance sounds earnest. There are very few smiles and the only person who laughs on screen is a friendly visiting Russian fisherman.

An example of more humor, just so that you may see that this is the other side of the moon of the Marx Brothers. Two men are sitting at the dinner table. One tries to squeeze his half lemon on his fish and a squirt hits Peter Riegert in his left eye. Riegert winces and claps his napkin to his wounded eye, brushing off the other's apology. Then Riegert squirts some lemon juice on his fish and hits himself in his other eye. Cut.

The newly arrived Riegert decides to get to know the villagers and starts schmoozing a knot of fishermen on the wharf. They are friendly but a little wary. A baby in a nearby stroller begins to whimper and Riegert smiles at the tot and asks, "Whose baby is that?" The men all go silent and stare at their feet.

Two old geezers are grumbling over their beer about how fast things are changing, how the old days will soon be gone forever. One of them asks conversationally how much the other has been offered for his land. The second guy rattles off a complicated payment scheme like "One million from the front end with a two percent trust in structured derivative instruments." Back in Houston, Lancaster has hired a shrink who visits him regularly in his office. The shrink is determined to force Lancaster to get in touch with his feelings or some such nonsense. In the middle of a session, the shrink comes up with something like, "You know, you're really a stupid son of a bitch." Lancaster is shocked. "No, really, you're a terrible a**hole." Lancaster throws him out, still swearing, and the shrink takes to climbing the outside of Lancaster's office building and posting signs like "Happer is a mother --". Lancaster orders his secretary to call the police and have the madman shot, precipitating his flight from Houston.

The air in this tiny Scottish village is as strange as the sea that throws up on its beach oranges from South Africa and coconuts from the Bahamas. Out of the sky come meteors, Aurora Borealis, RAF Harriers on practice bombing runs, and helicopters with a bright light in front, like a living eye.

The performances are as liesurely as the unfolding events. No one runs around or shouts. Lancaster in his silver age is fine. The villagers are completely convincing. It's all reminiscent of one of Ealing's comedies from the 50s, without any manic element. More deliberate, like "The Maggie." It's not a masterpiece but it's an enthralling and whimsical piece of life -- modern and benighted -- seen through a ludic prism.

A big American petrochemical company contemplates the construction of a oil refinery in a Scottish isolated fishing village. A young executive (Peter Riegert) from the Texas is sent there and with the Scottish representative of the company tries to negotiate with the local authorities to buy the ground. But things don't go exactly as planned. Indeed, the two men are more and more seduced by the easy life that reigns in the village while the inhabitants are tempted by the company's initial plan in order to grow rich. Then, the manager of the firm (Burt Lancaster) arrives in the village to settle the question with surprising results.

Bill Forsyth made an ecological tale full of charm and sensibility. He enjoys describing with a discreet and subtle humor the daily life of this Scottish village which seems to be virtually cut off from the outside world. Like the main protagonist, relaxed way of life that reigns in this fishing village gradually overcomes us. But we can also understand Forsyth's work as an invitation to the pleasure of the senses. Indeed, Riegert enjoys the food he eats and the whisky he drinks; he is charmed by the beauty of the landscapes and what he finds by the seaside (his collection of shells) and especially the rare phenomenon of the northern lights. Ultimately, his stay will do him good since he'll fully become integrated with the inhabitants. There's a small detail that says a lot about it: Riegert will put in his cupboard his American suit to wear instead a sweater.

Bill Forsyth has also written the screenplay and the merits we ca attribute to it is to have avoided the traps the topic was tending: a rejection of Manicheism and the characters globally escape caricature. The character acted by Burt Lancaster is more passionated by astronomy than his firm and the power of money.

"Local Hero" is a breath of fresh air and just like Peter Riegert, we would like to prolong our stay in this Scottish fishing village far from the stress of modern life, far from the Hollywood imperialism.

In this cynical age of image counting for all and increasingly small minded audiences being baffled by anything approaching subtlety, this film represents a much needed haven for the more cerebral viewer. It's pitch perfect lampooning of the massive gulf between supposedly similar cultures is a joy to behold over and over.

That fact that not much really happens is, in fact the whole point. It is a modern comedy of manners, the humour being in how characters react to alien situations.

It is exactly the kind of film Ealing studios would have produced had they survived into the 80's, and as such is to be praised for trying to show how simply taking an off centre look at real life can inform and entertain more eloquently than those who shout their satire from the rooftops.