DEFENDOR (2010) **

Defendor, like Super, is about a man who takes it upon himself to become a vigilante superhero.  While somewhat humorous, it is much more serious about its subject matter and whether or no the hero’s delusions of grandeur are a product of mental illness.  I think there’s room for a good movie here, but writer/director Peter Stebbings never quite finds it.  

Arthur (Woody Harrelson) dons a black outfit, helmet, and painted-on mask to fight his archnemesis, Captain Industry.  He also does battle with a crooked cop (Elias Koteas) who has a thing for a junkie hooker (Kat Dennings).  She then uses Arthur to get more drugs by claiming to know all about his fictional villain’s operation.  

There was a good idea here.  The early scenes set a nice tone that the rest of the movie struggles to recapture.  Super and Kick-Ass did a good job portraying its characters as off-kilter, but still incompetent and believable as a makeshift superhero.  Here, it never seems like Harrelson’s in any real danger, not because he’s adept at kicking butt, but because the screenplay seems much too convenient.  At all times, it feels like a first draft of a script as the predicaments arise and are resolved without much consequence or emotional impact.  (Even the tragic ending falls flat.)  The action is flatly filmed too, what little of it there is, anyway.  

Harrelson almost singlehandedly holds the picture together.  He does a fine job as the vigilante crimefighter and as his possibly unstable alter ego.  Dennings, one of the more winsome and enchanting actresses around, is stuck playing a thoroughly repellent junkie who grates on the nerves more than tugs at your heart.  Koteas is well-cast as the slimy cop, but the script lets him down.  Sandra Oh is also around as Defendor’s therapist, although her intrusions on the narrative (most of it is told in flashback from her office) become annoying quickly.