DVD review: Defendor

A mentally ill man decides to become a real life superhero.

After Kick Ass popularized the concept of “What would happen in real life if somebody put on a spandex costume and started fighting crime” we start with the usual wave of copycat movies.

Defendor didn’t learn Kick Ass lessons properly. Maybe they can be excused considering that Kick Ass didn’t perform as expected at the box office, although it still turned a good profit, but where Kick Ass was all kind of wonderful and funny this is a somewhat depressing experience.

Yes we all know that dressing up as a superhero and fighting crime in our society would be a form of madness but that’s not the point. Superheroes stories are escapist fantasies where the wrongs can be righted and evil can actually be punched in the face.

Kick Ass managed to have his cake and eat it too with the creation of Hit Girl. So they had Kick Ass as the sad loser superhero and Hit Girl as the “Kick Ass” one, if you can pardon the bad pun.

Here we only get to loser part of the equation, played by an extremely well cast Woody Harrelson who looks and sounds the part, but he is not really a story that we would like to follow.

Who’s the target audience of this? Superheroes fans will be annoyed, non superheroes fans will be disinterested, maybe former superheroes fans that recovered from their vices and want to laugh at their former interest? It’s a mystery.

Kat Denning is entertaining as usual but terribly miscast as a young prostitute / crack whore.

There are some laughs every now and then but really too few and too little. It clearly aims to be a black comedy but it doesn’t do enough.

Conclusion: Forgettable in every sense.