Review of Super (2010) by Private U — 13 Sep 2013

Take the twee humour out of Juno, the unflinching gore out of Videodrome, and your somewhere close to the tone that Super tries to accomplish. Well paced, outlandish and at times excessive in its nastiness.

Frank (Rainn Wilson) knows he's losing his wife, and when she clears the wardrobe and disappears into the arms of Kevin Bacon's believably charismatic druglord, he adopts a costume, a monicker (The Crimson Bolt) and attempts to take matters into his own wrench-wielding hands.

Inspired by the superheroes of fiction and the eagerness of his overexcited, sexualised confidante Libby (Ellen Page) he becomes increasingly determined to invoke righteous and unglamorous hate on those that would break the law, or at least his very clear interpretation of it. A nervous hilarity ensues and often prevails.

Plenty of nods can be made to have-a-go-hero plotline of Kick-Ass but this is by no means the same film. The story develops without pulling a punch, lacing fun and well scripted character with impromptu graphic violence. Where Kick-Ass ascends sharply into the abstract romantic world of crimefighting, Super, stays true to its superreal portrayal of hurt and weaponry to the last. Perhaps director Gunn's hope was that amongst the mix of amusing pathos, light hearted patter and hard-hitting physicality we'd find a new jarring but affecting tone for the genre. And he might be a bit right.

Perhaps it's real, true potency however, lies in how it sits against the rest of the action/superhero genre in general. If The Crimson Bolt is the vigilante of this fictional suburbia then maybe Super is the vigilante answer to the portrayal of violence in modern film. The question is plain: who is really making light of gory onscreen displays: Films who utilise them to comedic effect, or those that don't?

Not for the feint of heart or humour.

7/10.