Superheroes (2007)

Dash Mihok as Ben Patchett
Directed by Alan Brown
Written by Alan Brown
Cast Spencer Treat Clark, Nancy Giles, Margo Martindale
Genre Drama
MPAA rating Not available

Synopsis

Set in and around New York City in the autumn of 2005, SUPERHEROES is the story of the relationship between two Americans: A wounded Iraqi War veteran who struggles to live with the psychological and physical scars of battle, and the aspiring filmmaker who accompanies him to a cabin in the Catskills to document his story.

Ten years ago, Ben Patchett joined the Army Reserves to pay for his college education. A month before he completed his obligation, Ben’s Reserve unit was deployed, and he was sent to Iraq, ill-prepared for battle. Ben returns home traumatized by his experiences, and with a body full of shrapnel from a mine explosion. While he was gone to war, his wife left him for another man, taking their two daughters with her. Back living with his parents in his childhood home, Ben is in constant pain, pumped full of medication, and experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder.

Nick Jones, just a year out of college, works part-time in a restaurant kitchen as he half-heartedly pursues a career in documentary film. Nick shares a studio apartment and a bed with his ex-girlfriend, Julia, a passionately political dancer and budding choreographer who has been creatively paralyzed since the 2004 election. While she struggles to create a new dance piece, Nick documents the process with his video camera.

Ben and Nick meet when Nick volunteers to videotape an Iraqi War veterans’ support group at a local V.A. clinic. When Ben invites Nick to come and film him during his stay at a borrowed house in the countryside, a wary but ultimately tender friendship evolves between these two very different men.

Employing a fluid narrative structure, SUPERHEROES follows the course of this friendship, juxtaposing it with scenes of the vets’ support group, and of Julia in the dance studio, to explore the damage inflicted on one man by war, and the limitations of redemption.