Super

“You’ve got­ta for­get about that bitch, she’s a fuckin’ whore,” Frank (Rainn Wil­son) is con­soled after his wife Sarah (Liv Tyler), a recov­er­ing addict, leaves him for jovial drug deal­er Jacques (Kevin Bacon). Frank, how­ev­er, can­not for­get – after all, the day of his mar­riage to Sarah was one of only two per­fect moments in a life of oth­er­wise con­stant pain, humil­i­a­tion and rejec­tion. To Frank, Sarah is an angel who needs to be saved.

Inspired by either a vivid dream, a psy­chot­ic episode, or (as he believes) a divine vision, Frank becomes the Crim­son Bolt, a red-suit­ed vig­i­lante on a mis­sion. Armed with his trusty wrench, Frank puts into aggres­sive prac­tice an uncom­pro­mis­ing moral code, and is soon joined in this crime-crush­ing cru­sade by man­ic 22-year-old com­ic shop clerk Lib­by (Ellen Page) who, in the guise of the exul­tant­ly ultra­vi­o­lent Boltie, is all too ready to help. In Jacques, Frank will con­front his final adver­sary – and also dis­cov­er the mean­ing of his life.

On paper, James Gunn’s Super might sound like a deriv­a­tive infe­ri­or to a recent spate of films fea­tur­ing nerdish would-be super­heroes. Yet unlike its con­tem­po­raries, it is not based on a pre-exist­ing com­ic source (although it is full of com­ic-book ref­er­ences), and was in fact writ­ten by Gunn back in 2003, before even the orig­i­nal comics behind Kick-Ass and Scott Pil­grim vs. the World had yet surfaced.

Not that, even back then, this zero-to-hero moral­i­ty tale was penned in a vac­u­um. Gunn acknowl­edges the influ­ence of, among oth­ers, 1984’s The Tox­ic Avenger by giv­ing a cameo to its direc­tor, Lloyd Kauf­man. Gunn him­self had pre­vi­ous­ly script­ed The Spe­cials – a mad­cap com­e­dy about a sec­ond-rank super­heroic ensem­ble – but Super offers humour of an alto­geth­er less com­fort­able variety.

Com­par­isons to the car­toon­ish bru­tal­i­ty of Kick-Ass are inevitable, but where Matthew Vaughn’s film played a wil­ful­ly duplic­i­tous game, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­demn­ing and cel­e­brat­ing its char­ac­ters’ vio­lence, Gunn refus­es out­right to make any­thing about Frank’s vig­i­lante ram­page seem slick, cool or sexy.

Gunn includes many famil­iar super­hero movie tropes, but denies us the usu­al plea­sures asso­ci­at­ed with them (wish ful­fil­ment, cathar­tic out­let for sense of injus­tice) by focus­ing unflinch­ing­ly on the arbi­trari­ness, not to men­tion the bloody con­se­quences, of Frank’s always ques­tion­able – and often ques­tioned – actions.

Frank is a whin­ing, pathet­ic odd­ball with extreme prej­u­dice – and Wil­son, in a fear­less per­for­mance, leaves us uncer­tain whether to sym­pa­thise with, or be repulsed by, this ridicu­lous schlub who blud­geons not just a queue jumper but also his under­stand­ably protest­ing girl­friend; who acts on prophet­ic visions that he sees in his own vom­it; and who ignores pleas for mer­cy from a (lit­er­al­ly) unarmed man. And yet Frank is, as Sarah tells him, ​‘good’.

Super is fun­ny alright, but only because, in the moral and emo­tion­al dis­ori­en­ta­tion that it so skil­ful­ly con­jures, ner­vous laugh­ter seems the only option. Bitchin’ unforgettable!