GFT, February 23, 7.20pm
For the most part, Mike Barnett's HBO-backed documentary about America's real-life superheroes takes its protagonists at mask value. Oh, it smiles a bit at the image of beer-bellied blokes in home-made costumes but it never breaks out into a laugh. Indeed, Barnett's rather plain movie (if this was a comic book it would be drawn by Don Heck not Neal Adams) finds good reason for their existence. But it can't quite hide the problematic nature of the very concept. In passing we learn that quite a few of these men and women suffered some form of abuse as a child and, as a real-life cop points out, one group's "bait patrol" – in which a young woman is sent out to wander the streets in the early hours to draw out potential muggers – looks an awful lot like entrapment. Still, by the end, our heroes are seen handing out help packs to down and outs and the homeless, and that's heroic in its own way. Whether Barnett would make a similar film about social workers, though, remains to be seen.
