SOME KIND OF HERO (1981) **1/2 When Richard Pryor was afraid of something, or found it too terrible to confront in its purest form, he resorted to humor as a defense mechanism. So when he found thousands of men around him returning from an unnecessary war, in which they had been tortured by the enemy and abandoned by the ones who sent them, it's not surprising that he reacted with a mixture of jokes and outrage. It's not one of the Hollywood templates, that's for sure, and I don't recommend lesser talents employing any similar strategy. But for Richard, it works. The film is so poignant largely because portions of it are so uncomfortable for him. What do you do when your primary training is combat skills, and no one cares about you? C'mon, this is an easy one. Richard's not so much digging up hidden truths, or even ones difficult to find, but obvious truths that the rest of us prefer to ignore. So maybe he's not so weak for having to joke about them.
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