Review of Super (2010) by Ryan C — 13 Jul 2012

This underrated little film is what you might call an ultra-realistic superhero movie, if such a thing is possible. What would happen if a dead-end nut job with a hero complex embarked upon a violent crusade against the local riff-raff? "Super" succeeds where Kick-Ass fails, which purported to be a more realistic superhero film, yet had a character with an abnormal level of pain tolerance due to an accident, and a 12 year-old female assassin. An initially restrained narrative devolved into an explosive Hollywood finale that featured a rocket launcher and a mini-gun mounted jet pack.

"Super" has been pitched, wrongly, as a comedy. It isn't. At its lightest the blackest of comedies, it is often a shocking, jarring vigilante movie weighted in reality (imagine the Punisher without the arsenal and a garish red outfit). When this miserable screw-loose avenger hits people with his pipe wrench, they stay hit. There is no cartoon violence, here. This becomes obvious when he grievously injures a man and then his girlfriend for cutting in line at a movie theatre. You don't know whether to revile the character or sympathise with him, for he is very relatable. He has a unerring sense of brutal justice, from murder down to a social misdemeanours.