Once a week, he explains, he would put a mouse in the terrarium and watch the snake go hunting for dinner.
Then one day he put in a mouse that didn’t want to play along. As the snake moved towards it, Hesher recounts, it reared up on its hind legs and “punched” the snake in the face.
No other mouse had ever done such a thing, and the snake was stunned and didn’t know what to do. When he approached again, the same thing happened and eventually, the snake backed off.
Hesher would add other mice into the tank, but they would all hide behind the original mouse, and eventually, the snake starved to death.
“So who am I?” asks the sweet old grandmother to whom Hesher is telling the tale. “And who is the mouse?”
For most of the film, I found myself asking the same question. Hesher, played by the always awesome Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is a dirty, course, tattooed metalhead who comes into the life of T.J., a young boy trying to make sense of his world.
T.J. and his father Paul, played by Rainn Wilson, are living with his grandmother in the aftermath of the death of T.J.’s mom. Paul can barely get off the couch and the family is falling apart.
T.J. meets Hesher when he smashes a window in a construction site in a fit of rage. Hesher has been squatting in the house, and explodes out of the building in a fit of violence equally as disturbing as T.J.’s.
Their paths quickly part, but not for long. Hesher starts showing up everywhere T.J. goes, and soon moves in with his family, seeming to follow the logic that since T.J. wrecked his living arrangement, he owed him a roof over his head.
Bizarrely, the family is so disjointed that no one really questions their new house guest, who is about 15 years older than T.J., and Hesher soon begins to have an influence on the family.
It’s not necessarily a good influence. Hesher is an aggressive, intimidating animal, and Gordon-Levitt (Third Rock from the Sun, “Brick,” “The Lookout,” “500 Days of Summer) proves once again he able to fully and completely become his characters.
He’s scary. When he calmly looks on as T.J.’s head is being thrown into a urinal by a bully, or when he grabs his nose with hedge-trimmers and squeezes, there are parts that border on disturbing and are tough to watch.
Even the scenes where he is attempting to do good – forcing T.J. to set the bully’s car on fire in an act of revenge, freaking out and making an embarrassing and frightening scene in front of T.J.’s much older crush Nicole (Natalie Portman) in an attempt to drive them together -- he is always raw and uncomfortable.
But is Hesher the snake in the story, or the brave mouse? Decide for yourself. One thing is certain though, his extreme sense of justice, his loyalty and the sheer energy he possesses, somehow breathes life into a dying family and shows them they have something worth living for, despite what they have lost.
Good movie. But choose your viewing companions carefully. This one’s not for everyone.
