I'm excited about this summer's Kick-Ass which I think is the first big movie to explore the superhero-in-the-real-world theme. Starring are not only McLovin and Nic Cage, but some girl who plays a 12-year-old-vigilante named Hit-Girl who calls guys cunts before chopping off their legs. Oh, and Chris told me that he'd read a review calling the movie "irresponsible". Let's face it though: anything starring Nic Cage these days isn't going to be Fellini or Haneke. But if you want a bit of complexity to go with your masked avengers, Defendor might do.
Our protagonist, Arthur Poppington, had a hard luck childhood. His dad died and his mom was an alcoholic no-show. Plus, he was a bit of a dimwit. For solace, Arthur, like a lot of kids, turned to comic books. Fast-forward 30 years or so and he still loves comic books and is still a dimwit, but he now duct-tapes a "D" to his chest and fights crime as Defendor (with the mask on he does a mean Christian Bale: "Look out, termites... it's squishing time"). He's got no powers and he's a bit fat and bald. For weapons, he brandishes a club and jars of irritated wasps.
His crimefighting is pretty arbitrary until he meets a prostitute named Kat (Kat Dennings who is doomed to disappear soon because her squeaky voice prevents any emoting whatsoever, which is too bad because she's beautiful in the best way, i.e. tragically; she's a combination of sexy and too young to be sexy) who happily points him towards some deserving evil (e.g. her corrupt-cop pimp Dooley - Elias Koteas - a former john, and her sexually abusive father).
One of the more interesting things about the film is how it shows that although we clamor for flawed heroes, we rarely actually get them, nor do we care that we don't actually get them. I'm thinking mostly of the movie versions of Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark. Yeah, Bruce is bordeline sociopathic and Tony's got hubris up the wazoo, but those guys are moral and mental overmen. Rare is the off-choice, for them. It says a lot about Bale (and Keaton) and Downey Jr. that there characters aren't filmic cardboard a la Val Kilmer and Chris O'Donnell.
Harrelson's Defendor is a refreshing subversion, in this sense. Woody said he played Poppington basically as a guy with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, a guy stuck at 11-years-old, naive and unassuming. That's as far as the film goes with subversion, though, as the film basically just reinforces our motivations for consuming superhero fare. We end up simply cheering for Defendor as he straps up to combat Hamilton's (?!) chief weapons trafficker. Never do we actually want Poppington, who's basically disabled, to give-up heroing for the stable family life and love that he's offered. "When, I'm Defendor, I'm a million times better than Arthur." I think that line is meant to show the fallacy of Poppington's hero fantasies, but it's doesn't really. We end up straight agreeing with him (the film's final image is a flower-laden shrine to Defendor).
There's tons that could have been mined dramatically. There's never any real pathos for Arthur, we never pity him. Had the film meditated more on the violence he experiences as Defendor, the film would have been more challenging. However, the Arthur's injuries are glossed over and he enters and leaves hospitals pretty undramatically. The mental illness stuff never felt cheap (Giovanni Ribisi / Juliete Lewis style), but neither was it played for the drama it could have been played for.
This is a solid film in no small part to Harrelson, whose handsomeness has always had something off about it, and Elias Koteas who always seems to bring a small dose of Cronenberg depravity to anything he's in. This is a solid movie, but, ultimately, an easy one, which is too bad.
I still want to see it. But I was hoping it would be more challenging in the sense you described. Oh well.