Happer, an avid amateur astronomer, tells Mac to watch the sky and to notify him immediately if he sees anything unusual.

Mac spends several days in Ferness, gradually adapting to the slower-paced life and getting to know the residents, most notably hotel owner and accountant Gordon Urquhart and his wife Stella.

Mac receives encouragement from an unlikely source: Victor, a capitalistic Soviet fishing boat captain who periodically visits his friends in Ferness and checks on his investment portfolio, managed by Gordon.

As the deal nears completion, Gordon discovers that Ben Knox, an old beachcomber who lives in a driftwood shack on the shore, owns the beach through a grant from the Lord of the Isles to his ancestor.

When Mac informs him of the snag in the proceedings, he decides to negotiate personally with Ben and, in the process, discovers a kindred spirit.

[citation needed] Michael Douglas and Henry Winkler were both actively pursued by Bill Forsyth for the role of MacIntyre (which ultimately went to Peter Riegert).

In his review of the album for AllMusic, William Ruhlmann wrote: Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler's intricate, introspective fingerpicked guitar stylings make a perfect musical complement to the wistful tone of Bill Forsyth's comedy film, Local Hero ...

What makes this material really work is the low-key approach of the writer-director, Bill Forsyth, who also made the charming Gregory's Girl and has the patience to let his characters gradually reveal themselves to the camera.

[13]James Berardinelli gave the film three and a half stars out of four, calling it "a fragment of cinematic whimsy—a genial dramatic comedy that defies both our expectations and those of the characters".

Berardinelli also focused on Forsyth's abilities as a storyteller, noting that the director "finds the perfect tone for this not-quite-a-fairy-tale set in a quaint seaside Scottish village named Ferness.

Berardinelli concluded that Local Hero represents "the best kind of light fare: a motion picture that offers a helping of substance to go along with an otherwise frothy and undemanding main course".

[14] The New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote, "Genuine fairy tales are rare; so is film-making that is thoroughly original in an unobtrusive way.

Like Gregory's Girl, it demonstrates Mr. Forsyth's uncanny ability for making an audience sense that something magical is going on, even if that something isn't easily explained.

Given a larger canvas, director Forsyth has in no way attempted to overreach himself or the material, keeping things modest and intimate throughout, but displaying a very acute sense of comic insight.

"[16] Almar Haflidason called Local Hero "a wry film that slowly slips under the skin to surprising effect" in BBC Home.

Haflidason concludes, "Once over, the mood of the film hits home and a longing develops to visit once again the characters of this warm and deceptively slight comedy.

Panton praised the cinematography as "little short of amazing" and that Local Hero was "Bill Forsyth's finest work of all, this is a perfect film.

The site's consensus reads: "A charmingly low-key character study brought to life by a tremendously talented cast, Local Hero is as humorous as it is heartwarming".