Review of Defendor (2009) by Sam D — 18 Jul 2010

Arthur (Woody Harrelson) is a socially immature guy with a serious lack of common sense & is "not quite all there upstairs". The life he's led has somewhat forced him to be delusional wherein he slips under a superhero character which he prefers to be called as 'Defendor' with an O. He's out on a mission to defeat someone he calls 'Captain Industry'. He blames 'Captain Industry' for his losses, & believes that for the society's well-being, he needs to get rid of this Captain Industry.

Quite a different kind of superhero movie where our hero neither has supernatural powers like that of Spiderman & Superman nor super financial powers like that of Batman. But he has a cause for which he feels that he needs to become a superhero with whatever resources are handy to him. Since he's not right in mind, he gets out to fight the baddies with his limited resources, & this is supposed to create comedy situations. But it fails there for most of the part. The emotional sequences aren't well done either. I felt somewhat sympathy for Arthur, but not enough. "DARKLY FUNNY"? It's neither enough dark nor enough (in fact, hardly) funny. I can hardly remember myself laughing out loud while watching the movie. Maybe 2-3 chuckles at the most. The script lacks meat & doesn't work at many levels.

One of the main reasons I went for this movie was Woody Harrelson's name on the casting list. Unfortunately, he isn't that effective here. I'm not sure if the weak script is to be blamed for that. Kat Dannings is the best of the lot. Sandra Oh & Elias Koteas are efficient. Michael Kelly is okay. I was surprised to find Lisa Ray on the casting list. Of course, she went unnoticed for me.

On the whole, you won't be missing much if you give this one a skip. 5.5/10.