Better late than never: N.Y.

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Better late than never: N.Y. Times DVD guy Dave Kehr riffs on Lamont Johnson's The Last American Hero ...a longish reflective lead piece and everything. Released in '73, Hero was "the sort of midlevel movie that would soon disappear from Hollywood as American movies fragmented into big-budget event films (Mr. Bridges lent his presence to one, the 1976 remake of King Kong) and no-budget genre pictures. The uncondescending, eye-level view of the American South here seems perfectly pitched, its triumphalism muted (Jeff Bridges' Junior Jackson wins races but has a harder time with his lady love, played with sparkle by Valerie Perrine), and its scale neither overbearing nor overly restricted."