SCREENINGS
& MEANINGS
By
Gerald Schmitz
Once
upon a time: a comedic romp in the wild west
Gunless
(Canada 2010)
Defendor
(Canada 2009)
The armed action hero, loaded
with lethal weapons, is so much a part of American popular movie culture
dominating our screens that it’s hard to know what to make of
a Canadian spoof of the western genre when it rides into town.
Gunless, directed and written
by William Phillips (Treed Murray, Foolproof), is a worthy attempt to
poke gentle fun at the shoot’em-up mentality that regularly crosses
our border. Its chief asset is the excellent Calgary-born Paul Gross,
best known for his role as the polite straight-arrow Mountie on the
TV series Due South. Here he plays against type as an American outlaw
gunslinger Sean Rafferty, “the Montana Kid,” dragged by
his trusty horse due northwest having escaped the hangman’s noose
for killing 11 men, he later proudly insists.
The Kid makes quite an entrance
into the frontier village of Barclay’s Brush circa 1878 (filmed
in the Osoyoos region of southern B.C.’s Okanagan valley). Long,
tangled hair extensions hanging down, muddied, bloodied and bruised,
he’s a sight for sore eyes. Still, the locals are impressed by
this pistol-packing outsider and eager to help. The doctor removes a
bullet from his backside, splitting his trousers. Of course there’s
a Chinese laundry to repair that and clean his smelly duds, offering
a flamboyant Oriental-patterned outfit as temporary replacement.
The fun is just beginning.
When the friendly giant blacksmith fixes his horse’s shoe, the
Kid contrives to take offence, and demands a shootout before sundown
to defend his honour. There are actually lots of guns in town, just
the wrong kind, rifles and shotguns, for a proper duel. A comely widow
Jane (Sienna Guillory) offers him a pistol with a broken hammer in exchange
for helping her put up a windmill. Naturally they end up falling into
each other’s warm embrace, while the blacksmith dutifully puts
himself in jeopardy by forging a new part for the pistol. Naturally,
too, there’s a painfully correct young Mountie, Corporal Kent
(Dustin Milligan), to remind the stranger that this isn’t the
wild west but Her Majesty’s law-abiding dominion.
The Kid takes it all in stride
with an attitude of bemused exasperation. “What is it with these
people?” he keeps wondering aloud. Out on the range, he asks his
horse, “How far away are we from a real country?” An in-joke
for the home audience: remember Lucien Bouchard’s pre-referendum
taunt that Canada wasn’t a “real country.” The question
is, will enough Canadians bother seeing Gunless to get it?
No horse opera would be complete
without a blazing confrontation with some bad guys. That would be Ben
Cutler (Callum Keith Rennie) and his gang of trigger-happy bounty hunters
pursuing the Kid across the border. The good citizens of Barclay’s
seem to have adopted their American desperado and rally to his side.
This being a comedic Canadian “northwestern,” there’s
lots of noise but it all turns out rather disarmingly and harmlessly
in the end.
Not everything in Gunless
works. The fine Aboriginal actor Graham Greene is wasted as a dopey
sidekick in a floppy hat. Clichés and stereotypes abound. Still
Gunless, and the taming of Gross’s character in particular, uses
playful humour to make the point that talking is better than killing.
The movie also hums along with a great score by Greg Keelor of Blue
Rodeo and new songs from the veteran Canadian rock-country band.
Gunless has had a rough reception from fault-finding Canadian critics.
Fortunately, it never takes itself too seriously. And it’s that
rare homegrown feature to get a multiplex release, with no warnings
about sex, violence and coarse language attached. Go see it.
Hollywood has also given
us increasingly bombastic versions of the avenging superhero, often
taking classic comic-book franchises and reinventing them with tons
of high-tech sci-fi wizardry. In the battle of good versus evil, the
more kabooms and the louder the crashing soundtrack the better. Whether
it’s the new Iron Man 2 or a next instalment of X-Men, these are
blockbuster spectaculars that can count on big box-office numbers based
on the videogame crowd alone.
So what can a low-budget
Canuck film possibly offer up against this competition? In the case
of writer-director Peter Stebbings’ Defendor, which premiered
at last fall’s Toronto film festival, it can tell a pretty amazing
empathetic human story that doesn’t conform to any of the conventions
of the genre.
Defendor (make sure that’s
with an “o” not an “e”) is the fantasy superhero
alter-ego of Arthur Poppington, a mentally challenged man who is doing
his earnest best to do good in the world, motivated by deep feelings
of childhood abandonment. Arthur blames his father for his mother’s
death from a drug overdose and, in adolescent comic-book fashion, projects
this onto his nemesis, the evil “Captain Industry.” Arthur’s
only friend is city contractor Paul Carter (Michael Kelly), for whom
he works holding up signs on construction sites.
In his spare time, Arthur
dresses up in a crudely homemade “superhero” costume —
a black turtleneck with a big “D” made from duct tape on
his chest, pants to match, an old helmet with a video camera fastened
to the side. He makes a mask by brushing black shoe polish around his
eyes and temples. A loner using his boss’s warehouse as a base
of operations, Defendor’s only crime-busting weapons are a slingshot,
a lot of marbles to throw and a vintage truncheon passed down from his
grandfather. Oh, and he cruises around in a borrowed truck rig, not
a sleek, sexy car.
You might be tempted to dismiss
Arthur as a pathetic character who has lost his marbles. That’s
what a corrupted foul-mouthed undercover cop (Elias Koteas) does when
on night patrol Defendor comes across him abusing a teenage runaway,
Katerina (Kat Dennings), who’s selling herself on the street to
feed a crack addiction. Yet our hero takes some blows to become her
true friend and adult protector. He looks out for her the way no one
else has. He even foils the drug-lord mob that the crooked cop is in
cahoots with. As he tells her: “When I’m Defendor, I’m
not Arthur. I’m a million times better.”
Oscar-nominated American
actor Woody Harrelson (The Messenger) gives an immensely affecting performance
as Arthur/Defendor. He perfectly captures the physical mannerisms, the
intensity and the vulnerability of an oddball dark knight we come to
believe in. It’s one of Harrelson’s best roles, and the
wonder is to find it in a little Canadian movie.
When Arthur’s gallantry
gets him in trouble with the law, Carter steps forward to be his guardian.
A court-appointed psychiatrist (Sandra Oh) is charmed and disarmed by
his honest simplicity. It’s that which frames the story and wins
us over. He doesn’t need to be dressed up in a costume to be appreciated
as a good person with a good heart. He finds his inner Defendor.
This is a marvellously acted
and constructed movie that actually makes you care about its troubled
protagonist. Given a very limited release, look for it on DVD. You’ll
be glad you did.
Schmitz is a freelance writer based in Ottawa.
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