Can vig­i­lante jus­tice ever be ful­ly justified?

In recent weeks, bill­boards, bus stops and Face­book feeds have been plas­tered with ads for Sui­cide Squad. Most of us know the tagline by now: ​‘Worst. Heroes. Ever’; DC’s lat­est offer­ing is being billed as the ulti­mate anti­hero film. But audi­ences have long been fas­ci­nat­ed with flawed super­heroes. In these sto­ries, super­heroes are ren­dered human. They share our faults, our para­noia, our alco­holism and our regrets, though there’s usu­al­ly just enough Hol­ly­wood gloss left to make all of this enter­tain­ing rather than traumatising.

Almost Holy, the lat­est from Blood Broth­er direc­tor Steve Hoover, is an anti­hero film devoid of any gloss. His doc­u­men­tary pro­files pas­tor Gen­nadiy Mokhnenko who kid­naps home­less and drug-addict­ed chil­dren from the streets in Mar­i­upol, Ukraine and brings them to a reha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre. While he is respect­ed for his aggres­sive cam­paigns to res­cue home­less youth, Gen­nadiy is not with­out crit­ics. There are some who ques­tion his morals and force­ful methods.

Watch­ing the film, it is imme­di­ate­ly clear is that the real­i­ty of a real-life vig­i­lan­tism is far from glam­orous. Almost Holy is at times strik­ing­ly beau­ti­ful; haunt­ing com­po­si­tions are con­jured from refuse and pol­lu­tion. But there is noth­ing envi­able about Gennadiy’s work. There are scenes of the pas­tor enter­ing camps for home­less peo­ple at night. He dis­cov­ers chil­dren with track marks run­ning up their fore­arms and, in once scene, an old­er man the chil­dren claim has been vis­it­ing them every night to per­form sex­u­al acts. Gennadiy’s day-to-day is spent wrestling with issues of sex­u­al assault, domes­tic abuse, home­less­ness, addic­tion, and ill­ness. Lex Luther looks like a paci­fist com­pared to the sys­tem­at­ic oppres­sion in Gennadiy’s city.

Hoover’s doc­u­men­tary does not seek to canon­ise, or con­demn, Gen­nadiy. Per­haps more than Hollywood’s anti­hero block­busters, Almost Holy recog­nis­es the com­plexxi­ty of its cen­tral char­ac­ter and seeks to retain that ambi­gu­i­ty. In one scene, Gen­nadiy humil­i­ates a young boy under his care with a blood infec­tion. ​“Why should I buy your med­i­cine? Con­vince me… Why use mon­ey on you instead of buy­ing shoes or ice cream for the good kids?” He ges­tures to the group of oth­er chil­dren crowd­ed around them, ​“Or should I blow a for­tune on your unlike­ly recov­ery? So you can spike their veins under­ground?” Then Gen­nadiy deliv­ers the gut punch, ​“If I was God, I wouldn’t let him live!”

Gen­nadiy even­tu­al­ly calls an ambu­lance for the boy with the blood infec­tion, but we can’t for­give him for his vio­lent behav­iour. And we’re not sup­posed to. This is a film that chal­lenges us to accept a flawed pro­tag­o­nist. His faults do not negate his char­i­ta­ble work, but it is up to us to decide whether they make him less of a hero.

Almost Holy is released in cin­e­mas and on demand 19 August.