But Steve Nicholls is no Travis Bickle, and he\u2019s not just a nice guy, either. Even his agent\u2019s diagnosis of \u201cdouble schmuck\u201d falls magnitudes short\u2014the man is John Ritter<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He leaks audition opportunities to rival actors and congratulates them for landing Schlitz commercials at his expense. Instead of ruing a spurned invitation for late-night pie, he slinks his arm around the nearest homeless person and dines them instead. When his would-be girlfriend asks if he understands why she\u2019s focusing on herself for a while, he sheepishly says, \u201c…no.\u201d In hands with any more dirt under the nails, it’d be a called shot for the decade\u2019s stalking-as-romance trend. From Ritter, it\u2019s the admitted defeat of a benevolent alien baffled by our strange Earthling courtship rituals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Janet Maslin spelled out his genetic code in the first line of her polite pan<\/a>: \u201cIf John Ritter weren’t already a successful television star, he could become the greatest camp counselor this country has ever known.\u201d The Three\u2019s Company <\/em>breakout opens one of the only surviving interviews for Hero at Large<\/em> by waving hello to his \u201cUncle Booty and Aunt Danny<\/a>\u201d and wraps it up by admitting his deepest fears: \u201cWell I just come right out and say \u2018Hey, I got nothing to hide, man, I\u2019m scared to die, I\u2019m scared to live.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mortality hasn\u2019t much crossed the mind of Steve Nicholls, struggling actor and absentee cabbie. The poor bastard even finds a silver lining in any respectable thespian’s worst nightmare circa 1980: playing a superhero<\/em>. \u201cTwo years of Actor\u2019s Studio for this<\/em>?\u201d, laments another Hamlet-hopeful recruited to play Captain Avenger in a theater lobby near you. But Steve is a true believer\u2014in the gig, his fellow man, and the Captain\u2019s catchphrase, which he recites along with every commercial: \u201cWho says nice guys finish last?\u201d This guy is preternaturally nice enough to withstand all slings and arrows, like an embryonic Kevin Bacon showing up for twenty seconds to call him the f-slur; it’s not played as a joke, just the ambient radiation of these familiar mean streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Todd Phillips\u2019s Joker <\/em>may painstakingly recreate the neon sleaze of Taxi Driver<\/em>, but Hero at Large <\/em>works it in like stained wallpaper the last renters left behind. In his only other film credit, legendary street drummer Gene Palma keeps spinning his sticks for an audience of none. Off-duty cabs crowd the Belmore Cafeteria like black-and-yellow bugs to the zapper. Leonard Harris plays another rinse-and-repeat politician whose graze with a vigilante almost forces him to have an opinion. When Steve thwarts a bodega stick-up in his workday spandex, the crime feels as regular as the L line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given the PG rating, Nicholls doesn’t avenge any child prostitutes, but Hero at Large <\/em>treads murkier waters than our current superhero-industrial complex or even the \u201cfilm the whole family can enjoy<\/a>\u201d that Gene Siskel deemed it to be. There is no evil mastermind here, only cultural infantilization as focus-tested by god of gameshows Bert Convy, styled like Blofeld dropping in on Super Password<\/em>. Before searching for the real hero among his fakes, he nixes all gay and Jewish candidates on principle: \u201cCaptain Avenger is a WASP.\u201d His eventual offer on Ritter\u2019s soul comes with an action figure deal. All he has to do is stage some heroics to boost Captain Avenger\u2019s box office and shake hands with Convy\u2019s other<\/em> major client, the floundering mayor. Culture\u2019s days are numbered by sequels, with even the kind that grows on manhole lids to be rinsed off and replaced by \u201cpop.\u201d When the journalists finally lock and load their pencils, they don\u2019t take aim at anyone with keys to the magic kingdom; they open fire at the starving artist who needed a gig to get his apartment unlocked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet, Steve Nicholls saves one more day anyway. Hero at Large <\/em>is not an artifact of a simpler time, just one less homogenized. The fictional billboard for Captain Avenger <\/em>is dwarfed by a real one hailing Frank Langella\u2019s arrival as Dracula<\/em>. The sexual politics between Steve and Anne Archer\u2019s red-headed girl next door, who transactionally dates a coworker before enjoying a one-night-stand with him as a better decision she doesn\u2019t feel like making right now, would be safely quarantined to a bawdy straight-to-streaming rom-com today. This is a real movie that occasionally involves superheroes, as opposed to a superhero movie that occasionally involves real people. Ritter isn\u2019t compelling because he\u2019d make a good Spider-Man<\/em>\u2014and at this exact moment, he absolutely would\u2019ve. He\u2019s compelling because he makes a better camp counselor than taxi driver. The costume is just for show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hero at Large” is available for digital rental or purchase<\/a>, and is streaming with ads<\/a> on Tubi, Vudu, the Roku Channel, and Plex. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/hero2-1024x576.jpg\")
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