Arthur Poppington (Woody Harrelson) believes he's a superhero in the Canadian comedy-drama Defendor. (Alliance Films)

The title character in Defendor is a crime-fighter who tries to make the streets safe at night, like any other masked do-gooder. But unlike Batman or Spiderman, he’s battling baddies on a shoestring budget.

Defendor is a crime-fighter who tries to make the streets safe at night. But unlike Batman or Spiderman, he’s battling baddies on a shoestring budget.

By day, Arthur Poppington (Woody Harrelson) ekes out an income by holding signs at construction sites. Arthur is clearly delusional, because he also believes he’s Defendor, and regards work as a hindrance that gets in the way of fulfilling his ultimate goal – capturing his imagined arch-enemy, Captain Industry.

When night comes, the meek loner morphs into his wildly confident alter ego, a guy who thinks he’s immune to bullets. Arthur slaps on his low-tech costume, making a big “D” logo out of duct-tape. His “mask” is a bit of shoe-polish applied around his eyes, which makes him look like Bruce Lee playing Kato on the old Green Hornet TV series.

Defendor’s weapons are equally makeshift: a baseball bat, a jar of wasps, a few marbles he launches at some mob creeps, even some lime juice he sprays in one villain’s face. (This improvised dollar-store arsenal may sound comical, but it’s surprisingly effective.)

Like his protagonist, writer-director Peter Stebbings uses his limited resources wisely. This Canadian film teems with originality, even though its entire budget probably wouldn’t cover the catering costs of Batman Begins. Defendor is hard to categorize – the smart script delivers a poignant character study of an ostracized man-child, a meditation on the nature of heroism and several hilarious digs at comic-book clichés. In a gravelly, Clint Eastwood-style voice, Defendor spews out hoary lines like “Trouble has a way of following me.” Naturally, he has a tough time being taken seriously.

Holding it all together tonally is Harrelson, who appears in almost every scene. It’s inspired casting. As Woody Boyd on Cheers, Harrelson mastered the innocent-in-the-big-city vibe that looms large in Arthur’s personality; but in films like Natural Born Killers, Harrelson has proven he can also do dark and unhinged. In Defendor, he’s asked to combine both types, and it’s an utterly convincing performance. In a role that could have been played solely for laughs, Harrelson walks a fine line, generating empathy for his tormented character.

The film unfolds in a relaxed manner — it’s definitely not plot-heavy. Defendor bumps up against a cop on the take (Elias Koteas, in classic slimy mode), develops a friendship with a prostitute (Kat Dennings) and schemes – rather optimistically – to bring down a local mob boss. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear why Arthur/Defendor has such a personal response to criminal wrong-doing.

Arthur (Woody Harrelson, right) describes his secret life to court-appointed psychologist Ellen Chum (Sandra Oh) in Defendor.

Stebbings, a veteran TV and film actor himself, allows his troupe to shine. Harrelson and Dennings in particular have some nice extended scenes – it’s clear the two characters want to protect each other from their self-destructive impulses. Although the movie’s pacing gets a bit languid at times, the narrative’s charm – as well as Defendor’s – helps to compensate.

Defendor was shot largely in Hamilton, Ont., a city that’s making a lot of film appearances these days. Stebbings puts Steeltown’s industrial settings to good use, fashioning a suitably hostile urban nightmare; the nocturnal cinematography is especially fine. “The Hammer” is even identified as the locale here, but Defendor isn’t a self-conscious attempt to be Canadian. The film’s Canadian-ness is expressed more subtly, in its razor-sharp subversion of America’s super-hero culture.

Stebbings avoids both the stultifying earnestness and the belaboured quirkiness that doom many Canadian productions. And hey, isn’t that kind of heroic?

Defendor opens Feb. 19.

Greig Dymond writes about the arts for CBC News.