Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
I love films that look at the commonplace--and let's face it, superhero movies are commonplace these days--through skewed lenses that somehow open up endless possibilities as to just how totally fucked up something traditionally good can get. Although Christopher Nolan's version of Batman hints at a kind of fractured mind behind the cowl, writer-director James Gunn's SUPER is an entirely dark, even mentally broken work. It places those without powers who don masks and tights a half-step away from serial killers and religious zealots who kill in the name of God.
Foregoing his better-known comedy muscles, Rainn Wilson (THE ROCKER, "The Office") plays Frank D'Arbo, a short-order cook whose seemingly safe, secure world is shattered when his wife Sarah (Liv Tyler) is lured away by smalltime gangster and drug dealer Jacques (Kevin Bacon, loving life in full-on asshole mode). So overcome with grief over this change of events, Frank seeks comfort in his favorite religious television programming, a superhero show called "The Holy Avenger" (the title character is played with apt humility by Nathan Fillion). After a profound vision visits Frank, he decides to become costumed hero The Crimson Bolt. His initial mission is not simply to fight crime, but also to right daily wrongs committed by people who refuse to accept life's unwritten social contract. A particularly brutal beat down (by the Bolt's chosen weapon, a pipe wrench) happens when someone cuts in line in front of Frank at a movie theater. I get that.
Frank seeks advice on being a hero from comic book store employee Libby (Ellen Page), who digs the challenge of educating a man completely unaware of the conventions of comic books. The Crimson Bolt eventually develops something of a cult following in his town, even though Frank's ultimate goal in becoming this vigilante is to fulfill his God-given quest to save his wife. It doesn't take long for Libby to figure out what Frank is up to, and before long the Crimson Bolt has a sidekick named Boltie, who seems even crazier and more reckless than he is.
Gunn is no stranger to turning genre film's inside out or tackling sacred cultural cows. As a writer, he wrote such successful works as Zack Snyder's DAWN OF THE DEAD remake and both SCOOBY DOO films, and as a filmmaker, his SLITHER is quite simply one of the most entertaining icky monster movie I've seen in the last 10 years or more. But with SUPER, Gunn enters a realm I hesitate putting a label on. Maybe you'd call it maturity, but the movie doesn't exactly like the product of a fully mature mind. At the same time, there's a dark and deeply disturbing streak that runs right through the middle of this work. Frank's adventures could have easily been played for laughs, but Gunn is more interested in cracking open the skull (literally at times) of a man who feels he has the moral duty to decide who gets a beat down and who doesn't.
Of course, along with this more serious thread that runs through SUPER, we must also remember that Gunn arose from the Troma Studio system and wrote TROMEO AND JULIET, still one of the finest works made under the Troma banner. So when he sees the opportunity to take things right up the line of good taste and then drop kick them right over that line, he goes for it. But those moments are many of the film's most memorable. If you feel fairly certain that just the very realistic sound of a pipe wrench on skull would be too much for you to handle, such moments are simply the entry fee into some much rougher territory in this film. Still, along with moments of excruciating violence are some beautifully realized psychological drama, and Wilson is surprisingly effective pulling it off.
Although I'm sure it won't be, SUPER deserves to be placed in the pantheon of great and inventive superhero movies. It's subversive edge goes even further astray than Kick Ass, and its journey into the altered mind of a man driven to somewhat heroic acts is as rooted in pain as Batman or Spider-Man or a dozen other costumed individuals. Go see SUPER for the blood and insane behavior; go again for what lies beneath.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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