Defendor

Canadian 'Fight Back'

Canadians make great films. It's embarrassing how good their films can be when compared to Australian films. It's the flip side of Australia's cricket team thrashing their cricket team at the Commonwealth Games. When it comes to movie making, the Canadians just slay us.

There. I said it.

Nobody says it out loud, but Canada is the cultured, well-educated, bookish, serious  brother to the sporty, happy-go-lucky, pretentious Australia. Here's something for people to chew on: the film that kicked off the Australian film renaissance in 1970 was 'Wake in Fright', directed by Ted Kotcheff who is a Canadian.

Canada is the land of Glenn Gould and '32 Short Films About Glenn Gould'. Australia is the land of David Helfgott and 'Shine'. Their premier pianist defined the playing of Bach for generations to come. Our pianist is a guy who had a breakdown trying to play Rachmaninoff's third and went crazy. The movie about their guy is one of the most significant biopics of all time. Our biopic is an Oscar winner but really just another movie.

Another Canadian, John Ralston Saul is a front line top of the heap intellectual. We don't have anybody who can go toe to toe with John Ralston Saul. Canada produced Northrop Frye. We don't have a single literary critic that can hold a candle to Northrop Frye, then or since.

So you see, when it comes to cultural stakes, the Canadians just leave us behind. 'Defendor' is just another fantastic film in a long line of fantastic films that just slays us.

What's Good About It

Script. Acting. Execution.

Okay, there's more. The music is fantastic. It's an incessant ominous rumble of heavy minor key tones that in other movies would keep you on the edge of your seats, but in this on, serves to highlight the farce. It's a great work in irony.

Considering the near-glut of the comic book super hero movies in recent years, it's nice to see a down to earth ironic view of such cultural influence. Especially because we now know there are real people going out there donning costumes to do good these days, it seems like it's appropriate to take a shot at the growing influence of comic book culture.

What's Bad About It

Woody Harrelson is great, but he's such a ham. There a re moments watching this film and you think, "oh come on Woody, that's so close to being "the Full Retard". He's been playing a few hammy lunatics lately and this one had moments of being on the nose.

Also, you worry about narratives that feature stock characters such as the hooker-with-the-heart-of-gold. Maybe it's worse in a film like, say, 'Pretty Woman'. The point though is that the film is at its best when it is ironic about these characters and not when these stock characters push the narrative on by dint of being a stock character.

That being said, it's not a film with a whole lot of faults. Even the narrative no-no of the flashback didn't bother me at all.

What's Interesting About It

There once was a film called 'Hero at Large' starring John Ritter, about an actor who dons the costume of a superhero for advertising purposes, and on the way home from work one day, he ends up fighting crime on the New York subway. So this idea that somebody ordinary would don a costume and fight crime isn't exactly new or fresh. What's fresh about this one is that the main character is so intellectually challenged that he has problems distinguishing between literal meaning and metaphors.

One of the metaphors he mistakes is who he thinks his nemesis is in Captain Industry. Of course, there is no super villain calling himself Captain Industry. It is a garbled misunderstanding that takes place inside the head of a not-very-bright lad called Arthur. What the whole setup of the film evokes is 'Don Quixote'' where oblivious to the real world, a character decides to tilt at windmills as monsters.

The structure of the irony is exactly the same as Cervantes' great work as Woody Harrelson's Arthur explores the ramifications of taking up a life of crime-fighting in costume. What at the start seems absurd slowly transforms within the text to key moments where Arthur's delusions matter so much. It is precisely the dynamic in Don Quixote.

The other text the film evokes is of course 'Le Morte D'Arthur' by Thomas Mallory simply because of the chivalrous quest of the main character Arthur, who by name alone evokes King Arthur, but also because the chivalry ends with a conflict that is at once material but also existential. One of the crucial problems for Woody Harrelson's Arthur is whether he can ever be defined by his actions, and he can only define himself by donning the costume of 'Defendor' to fight crime. To that end he must fight and so he fights to the end. The symmetry in meaning is actually managed quite well.

The film also parodies the recent Batman 'The Dark Knight' film where a motivated but low-powered vigilante by the name of Brian gets killed by Heath Ledger's Joker. Woody Harrelson's 'Defendor' is indeed that guy with the hockey pads, but the film goes to great pains to demonstrate his cause is no less noble than Batman's. It's a splendid riposte to the borderline fascism of 'The Dark Knight'. As such, the film is filled with a fundamentally humanist and democratic impulse.

All in all, this one is very much worth watching.