If I’ve said this once I’ve said it 100 times. If you’re a 60-plus actor you need to lose the droopy neck wattle. It’s about as complex as having your teeth cleaned, and if your surgeon isn’t a complete idiot it won’t look like anything. You can still look weathered and grizzled and all that other other sexy saddlebag stuff. You can even keep a slight neck wattle, but droopies are impossible. And Sam Elliott knows this. Joe Biden‘s neck wattle has been driving me crazy, and he refuses to do the thing. It’s like walking around with your fly open.

From a 1.21.17 Hollywood Reporter review, written by John Frosch: “In The Hero, unlike in most of his other projects, Elliott appears in nearly every frame as Lee Hayden, an over-the-hill Western film star whose cancer diagnosis prompts him to plan a comeback, reconnect with his estranged daughter and romance a younger woman. If that story sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve seen it before, with tweaks and variations, in movies like The Verdict, Tender Mercies, The Wrestler, Crazy Heart and many more.

“Indeed, a sense of déja vu clings to the film — from the succession of predictable narrative beats to some done-to-death visual motifs (the waves of the Pacific rolling in, for example) — threatening to choke the life out of it. But direcctor Brett Haley (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Marc Basch) has a smooth hand, a light touch and, above all, the sense to stick close to Elliott. The leading man slips into the role as if it were a favorite pair of old sneakers, delivering a performance of such gentle melancholy and unforced charisma that spending 90 minutes with him is painless, and sometimes pleasant.”