Our Hero, Balthazar Review | Oscar Boyson’s Razor-Sharp Satire Centres The Male Loneliness Epidemic

Oscar Boyson, known for producing Good Time (2017) and serving as executive producer on Uncut Gems (2019), makes his directorial debut with Our Hero, Balthazar (2025). The film adopts the figure of the school shooter as a vehicle for examining male isolation, crafting a dark comedy that unsettles as much as it amuses. When the trailer dropped, many were surprised by the film’s bold, contemporary political themes, questioning whether it would do justice to such a sensitive issue. The title also reminds one of the Biblical association with the God of destruction and conflict. However, its use of satire and dark comedy elevate the experience, making an otherwise heavy subject more palatable. It leans slightly more towards Gen Z humour, which not everyone will admire, but the film ultimately comes across as well-intentioned. 

At its centre is Balthazar or “Balthy” (Jaeden Martell), a privileged Manhattan teenager who develops a romantic interest in his classmate, who is committed to gun reform. In an attempt to impress her, he uploads a video of himself weeping crocodile tears about gun violence. The performance is contrived, assembled from borrowed rhetoric circulating online, yet it blends seamlessly into the digital clout-hungry stream it seeks to imitate. This act of artificial vulnerability draws the attention of Asa Butterfield’s Solomon (Great, more Biblical names), a young man in Northern Texas whose intentions soon reveal a far darker trajectory.

The narrative follows Balthazar’s decision to travel to Fort Worth to meet Solomon, whom he imagines as a figure in need of intervention. Instead, he encounters a deeply troubled individual in his early twenties, living with his grandmother and harbouring violent fantasies. Perhaps it could be said that Solomon, in his own shell of solitude, recognised a similar loneliness in Balthazar, becoming the only one able to see beyond his facade.

Though the two men stand worlds apart in their social standing, there is a strange sense of connection. What emerges is an unstable companionship—almost a distorted buddy dynamic—where alienation binds the two more than any shared purpose. As Solomon introduces Balthazar to gun culture, the film risks overemphasising its thematic concerns. Yet, Boyson’s restrained visual approach maintains a sense of immediacy, grounding the characters within a recognisable social reality.

Butterfield’s performance is particularly striking. Beneath a veneer of bravado lies a palpable grief that exposes the emotional fracture underlying Solomon’s behaviour. Martell, by contrast, sustains a controlled detachment that gradually reveals its own form of disquiet. 

Neither young man fits neatly into moral categories. Solomon imagines himself as a perpetrator, while Balthazar fantasises about occupying the role of saviour.  These impulses mirror each other, revealing a shared inability to locate an authentic identity.

Balthazar’s emotional illiteracy is evident throughout. His capacity to simulate feeling contrasts sharply with his inability to experience it. His pursuit of the socially conscious classmate (Pippa A. Knowles) underscores this contradiction. The scheme he devises—to dissuade a potential attacker to impress her—reveals both naivety and self-interest, which drive his misguided actions. Whereas Solomon embodies the more extreme and volatile man—impressions by familial trauma and self-sabotage.

Boyson maintains a careful equilibrium between repulsion and empathy. The audience is compelled to confront the humanity of individuals whose behaviour remains deeply troubling. The film situates these characters within distinct class contexts, allowing their differences to inform the narrative better. The result is a study of social estrangement that merges absurd humour with genuine pathos. 

Boyson resists a simplistic diagnosis of a “crisis in masculinity,” probing the cultural conditions that amplify disconnection instead. Social media emerges as a central mechanism—encouraging performance over sincerity and fostering distorted forms of intimacy. Butterfield and Martell anchor the film’s exploration of contemporary anxieties. The film is visually striking, weaving in Texas’s urban landscapes to mirror the boys’ disjointed lives while keeping them at the centre of its focus. 

The subject matter inevitably provokes discomfort. Scenes depicting violent ideation resonate within a broader context, where such events remain a persistent reality. Yet the film does not propose solutions. Instead, it reflects the contradictions of its cultural moment, examining how identity, media and ideology intersect in destabilising ways. Its tone aligns with a distinctly generational sensibility, combining irony with unease.

There are fleeting suggestions that the two protagonists might redirect one another. However, their respective instabilities signal a persistent risk. The film embraces awkwardness and discomfort, allowing its humour to emerge from moments of acute tension. While not conventionally accessible, it achieves a degree of narrative resolution that reinforces its thematic concerns.

Our Hero, Balthazar (2025) operates simultaneously as cautionary narrative and dark satire. Boyson’s direction reveals a filmmaker attentive to contradiction, balancing emotional distance with observational clarity. The result is less confrontational than its premise suggests, adopting an almost anthropological perspective on its subjects. This measured approach lends the film an enduring, if unsettling, resonance.