Also, the way the film is essentially about Defendor's violent approach to criminals, yet the actual action scenes are executed in a fairly half-arsed way.
There is a good movie in here, real life comic book-style street vigilante's are very interesting ... it's a shame that the film couldn't commit to being a comedy, crime thriller or an urban drama.
Hey, you think good! Got me to thinking about your point, and here is what I came up with: (note- i have despised Woody's acting for 20+ years, and i am crazy about this film, and about his acting in it.)
I found the 'uneven' tone to be intentional on the part of the creators.
It seems to be integral to our growth in understanding just how limited is Defendor's perception of the chaos of daily life: things should make sense to him, but life just gets up and shoots him one day right when he thinks he has finally figgered it all out.
One never does know when life is going to hand one a funny or a fail.
Sometimes they can be the same thing, other times they are not, and we end up as dead as Defendor.
In sense, the unevenness seems more to me like deliberately 'ignoring genre boundaries' and 'breaking rules' than failing to maintain a given genre tone.
Yes, there is, indeed, a good idea for a movie here. But, it's not particularly thrilling, nor is it all that funny. Worse, as a drama I found it peculiarly unmoving. Just a sad bummer. And I never got a fix on Woody's primary problem. Is he mentally challenged (sure pulled off some neat tricks for a guy with such a low IQ), psychologically damaged by his upbringing, or both?
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