The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 534

The Victories -and Lossesof 'Heroes' BY CHARLES CHAMPLIN "Heroes" is a star vehicle and its star is Henry Winkler. It is a reasonable bet that the movie would not have been made if Winkler had not been passionately eager to do it, and if Universal had not thought it a risk worth taking to see whether Winkler's extraordinary popularity as television's The Fonz on Happy Days is transferable to the leave-thehouse audience. And so it is that Winkler gets to prove that The Fonz is a performance, not a private life-style played through a megaphone, and the audience has a chance to see one of the few movies released so far -more are coming -that deal with the country's Vietnam experience. The original script was written by James Carabatsos, I would guess out of experiences seen at close hand or strongly felt. It has evidently been considerably revised, although Carabatsos kept his solo credit after a Writers Guild arbitration.

David Freeman gets an unusual "special thanks" credit at the end. What I imagine survives intact is a vision of the Vietnam veteran as being unlike or at least feeling unlike any others in a society which has always treated its veterans like heroes even if they never left Ft. Dix. "Heroes" is an ironic title. Combat is combat, and death and maiming were as absolute in the greenery of Vietnam as in the trenches at Verdun.

But the widening national schism over Vietnam also isolated the men in the field from what you might call the consolations of patriotism (whatever they may have thought about the U.S. presence, or their own, in Vietnam). The consequence has been a generation of veterans regarded with a kind of uneasy diffidence by the society at large, and regarding themselves with confusion at least, often with an angry, withdrawn bitterness. "Heroes" is about that consequence, depicted rather than preached about and depicted with comedy, in the form of an eccentric love story, in a tone which carries echoes of works as various as "Catch-22," "Cuckoo's Nest" and any one of a number of odyssey pictures. It is a movie difficult to synopsize fairly because its revelations are progressive; it is a journey into understanding as well as across country.

Winkler is a Vietnam veteran under treatment at a VA hospital in New York for wounds both physical and mental. By now he is ambulatory and truant, slipping off to a recruiting station to talk the youngsters out of signing up. (The tone here is reminiscent of "Cuckoo's Nest" and there is some larky fun, with a comedy chase through Manhattan.) Winkler skips for good, this time on a pilgrimage to join up with some old 'Nam buddies and start a worm farm to restore the world's ecological balance. The goal is Eureka; it says so on a shoebox crawling with night crawlers. Boarding the bus is Sally Field, running out on a wedding that would open its own can of worms.

The confrontation of boy and girl is dangerously amusing: boy meets girl, girl loathes boy, etc. But Winkler and Field are very talented performers, as she has recently proved in "Stay Hungry" and again in the unlikely surroundings of "Smokey and the She sees quickly enough that there is turmoil or worse beneath the zaniness, as exasperating as the zaniness is for her. They stop off together to see 'Nam Buddy Henry Winkler shows Sally Field worm while they dine in a restaurant. PAGE 41 salabug Times HVON3 SUNDAY, Henry Winkler and Sally Field are in "Heroes," opening Friday at selected No. 1, a Missouri farmer played with a sleep- sweetness or a paralyzed innocence by Harrison Ford.

It is Ford who becomes the film's most direct symbol, the vet who feels so useless and alienated that both his will and his nerve have seized up like an untended engine. "The nights are boy worst," he and Winkler boy agree, and Ford fires a smuggled-out automatic rifle at the stars, like a numb, surroundings dumb ritual observance of dead gods. is The couple push West, now in Ford's whizbang car as he couldn't bring himself to her. race. There are more adventures, including a comedy fight which might have come from some other film but which here serves as a last gift before a grimmer reality begins to overtake Winkler.

Buddy No. 2, a middleclass black living in Albuquerque, can't be found; he's gone wandering again, of dealing with bad memories. it before," his wife says Buddy No. 3 can't be found reasons which bring the powerful (almost operatic) expected climax. The ultimate the piece is optimistic, guardedly too guardedly.

Fevers pass; a ent must finally diminish the frustrations of the past; renewal "Heroes" tries, I think, to or at least a very particular It is a very serious film which mask or to mitigate its comedy' formulations and moments (tumult in a diner; brawl with rowdies). It is a played big, sometimes though "Heroes" is most it is quietest, in the early ness at Ford's farm. When several hands have theaters. OCTOBER 8 case producer Jer- 1977 writer know a movie's intentions-and in this that means Winkler himself, director emy Paul Kagan, the principal David Foster and the consultant David Freeman- -it is not easy to whom to credit with what. There is some sense of a much 'HEROES' A Universal Picture.

Producers David Foster, Larry Turman, Director Jeremy Paul Kagan. Script James Carabatsos. Special thanks to David Freeman. Photography Frank Stanley. Editor Patrick Kennedy.

Production design Charles Rosen. Sound David S. Ronne, Bill Varney. Music Jack Nitzsche, Richard Hazard. Featuring Henry Winkler, Sally Field, Harrison Ford, Val Avery, Olivia Cole, Hector Ellas.

Dennis Burkley, Tony Burton, Michael Cavanaugh, Helen Craig, John P. negan, Betty McGuire, Running time: 1 hr. 49 min. MPAA-rated: PG (some parental guidance advised). another way ment: he is "He's done at last it is patiently.

what burdens to for It is essentially either, story a watchable and not quite feeling of The splendid supporting Sally but not lot. Ms. Cole loving pres- wife. There terrors and tor Elias as is all. hospital or er, although, define a new caught in area for itself.

tween farce attempts to to remembered seriousness with Earle Towne slapstick moments as a barroom first small film with perhaps entertainingly, al- (Swell idea.) affecting when Jack Nitzsche evening still- the music. "Heroes" helped shape ed theaters. smaller, calmer movie interleaved with larger moments, although there is an iron spine of consistency and an accumulating power which is even more evident on a second viewing. What was always there, I have little doubt, is a gift of implication which makes Winkler and Ford both symbolic carriers of the feelings of many who fought a hard war in hard circumstances. "Heroes" is aimed at a wide audience, and if it is not The Fonz that Winkler's fans find, it is an interesting and sympathetic character.

He creates in fact an intriguing puzzlenot what he seems to be until clear what he always was and he carried. a film of three fine and performances by Winkler, the Field and the laconic Ford. performances are a mixed is marvelous as the stranded is less satisfaction from HecWinkler's psychiatrist at the Val Avery as a sour bus drivin fairness, both roles are the film's -shifting beand comic romance en route tragedy. has some brief amusing a man hoping to become the ventriloquizing TV weatherman, the first weather dummy. and Richard Hazard did (PG) opens Friday at select-.