Defendor (2010)

Tagline: Fight back.

Curiosity: It stars Woody Harrelson as a crazy person! He throws wasps at people!

Plot: Thick-as-a-brick construction worker Arthur Poppington (Harrelson) spends his nights searching for Captain Industry, his mother’s killer. Along the way, he becomes bff with a crack whore (Kat Dennings), repeatedly beats up an undercover cop (Elias Koteas), and causes an awful lot of mischief for both a drug syndicate and the police force.

ALSO HE THROWS WASPS AT PEOPLE.

Thoughts: While the trailer makes Defendor look like a comedy – like the Canadian Kick-Ass – it’s actually the awful, non-union equivalent of Chris Nolan’s Batman films. Oh sure there are jokes spread around – WASPS!!! – but the majority of the film strains towards grittiness and drama. Yet it’s still a fairly ridiculous premise and, without someone like Nolan to guide the material, the film fails to work as a comedy or a drama.

I blame in the script. Harrelson does what he can with the material, and Dennings makes for a convincing crack whore (which I think is a compliment?), but the dialogue is too hammy to deliver much oomph. It’s pulpy, ludicrous – oddly enough the stuff of comic books, but it often fails the actors here. That the film comes padded at 100+ minutes doesn’t help either. One minute the viewer is expected to take drug trafficking very, very seriously, the next we’re to laugh at Arthur’s mental issues.

The movies feels perpetually ready to cross the line into tastelessness, as its few sources of humor stem from prostitution and mental retardation, but it can’t even make the leap into true trash. Defendor is too serious yet too silly, too offensive yet too toothless.

Reflection: Not to get all spoiler-y, but the self-important ending felt like a deliberate, personal attempt to piss me off. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace didn’t even get this self-righteous.