For every Batman out there, who's got gobs of money and gadgets galore to do his crime fighting for him, how many other self-anointed superheroes make do with homemade costumes and gadgets that can be pieced together with plunder from the local hardware store? That's the question "Griff the Invisible" poses at its start, introducing us to a quiet, painfully shy office worker who takes the law into his own hands when the sun goes down. But what at first seems like it's going to be a quirky riff on the superhero formula goes in surprising, and surprisingly serious, directions, and gives us instead a movie about what it means to be normal in a world that can be anything but.
Ryan Kwanten buries his natural good looks under a socially awkward persona and gives a sweet, painful performance as Griff. He plays Griff rather like a benign version of Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro's uber-scary character in "Taxi Driver," an unassuming guy who's completely out of touch with the world around him and goes home at night to entertain fantasies about being the hero in the drama of his own making.
Of course "Taxi Driver" goes into far darker places than "Griff the Invisible," and that's actually one of the things I didn't like about the latter movie. Griff's adherence to a fantasy world isn't healthy and shouldn't really be humored as his girlfriend suggests it should. How long before illusion and reality blur in the head of someone like that, with who knows what kinds of consequences? But the movie isn't interested in discussing that particular question at any length, which makes for a happier, sweeter ending, if a somewhat dishonest one.
Grade: A-
Ryan Kwanten buries his natural good looks under a socially awkward persona and gives a sweet, painful performance as Griff. He plays Griff rather like a benign version of Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro's uber-scary character in "Taxi Driver," an unassuming guy who's completely out of touch with the world around him and goes home at night to entertain fantasies about being the hero in the drama of his own making.
Of course "Taxi Driver" goes into far darker places than "Griff the Invisible," and that's actually one of the things I didn't like about the latter movie. Griff's adherence to a fantasy world isn't healthy and shouldn't really be humored as his girlfriend suggests it should. How long before illusion and reality blur in the head of someone like that, with who knows what kinds of consequences? But the movie isn't interested in discussing that particular question at any length, which makes for a happier, sweeter ending, if a somewhat dishonest one.
Grade: A-