It seems today that real life heroes are hard to find. At least when it comes to ordinary everyday citizens. But the rare occasion does yield some true heroes which never seem to garner enough attention from the press. But what if heroes did exist? Not you next door neighbor type hero but an honest to goodness, costumed wearing hero? The answer is revealed in this week’s release DEFENDOR.
Woody Harrelson plays Arthur Poppington, a mentally deficient man who considers himself the protector of his city. In search of his arch nemesis, Captain Industry, Arthur takes on the guise of Defendor, a costumed hero wearing black pants and a turtleneck with a large D made of duct tape on his chest. With home made weapons that include marbles and a truncheon he got from his grandfather, Defendor takes to the streets, video taping his exploits and saving the innocent.
Defendor’s first innocent victim is Kat Debrofkowitz (Kat Denning), a young prostitute being worked on the street by Chuck Dooney (Elias Koteas), a dirty cop if there ever was one. Defendor gets the drop on Dooney and bashes him pretty good while “saving” Kat from him. She ends up coming back to Defendor’s home, the storage facility for the city’s street crew, bringing her crack pipe in search of a place to crash a few days.
As Kat and Arthur begin to get to know one another, Kat plays him along, feeding him the information that he wants. When he talks of Captain Industry, Kat tells him she knows who he is and can help Defendor find him. The problem is that the man she’s setting Defendor up to go after is an actual bad guy, an importer of girls, guns and drugs. While Captain Industry might be a character in Arthur’s mind, Kristic (Alan C. Peterson) is an actual killer and in taking him on, Defendor will definitely get more than he bargained for.
Along the way Defendor gets beat down by a group of bad guys working for Dooney which leads us to meet his “family”. Paul Carter (Michael Kelly) is Arthur’s supervisor and friend. It was Arthur that saved Paul’s son from an accident involving a car. Since then, Paul and his family have adopted Arthur to an extent. After the beating, Paul tries to persuade Arthur to give up Defendor and to come live with him.
Criminals don’t tend to forgive and forget though. While Arthur is healing, they’ve decided that he may have heard or seen something and to take him out of the picture. At the same time and undercover policeman is working the case to put these guys in jail. The chances of their paths all colliding somewhere down the line increase with each minute you watch.
This movie works on so many levels. It works as a hero film with the costumed good guy taking on the bad guys. It works on a different level as the story of a mentally disabled man making his way in the world the best way he knows how, trying to do good where others turn away. And it works as a savior film where we have Arthur/Defendor doing all he can to save Kat from her current fate.
The stand out performance here is Woody Harrelson. As Michael Kelly says in the DVD extras, you feel for him, you want to help him, you want to take care of him. It would be easy to overplay this character in the film and make him over the top. Instead we are presented with a fleshed out character not only helping others but in need of help himself. We want him to get help but we also want him to succeed at the same time.
The rest of the cast does an equally good job though none stand out as Harrelson does. Kat Denning adds to her list of characters that come from a varied number of backgrounds and she does it well. Elias Koteas, once a hero himself in TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES as Casey Jones, has made slime ball characters his claim to fame and in this film you want to see him get his due.
Love this film.....excellent, poignant, ultimately uplifting.....
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