Why wasn’t “Kick Ass” this kind of movie? I mean granted I loved the comic book from Mark Millar, but “Kick Ass” the movie was not what I originally envisioned. “Super” from director James Gunn is what a movie about a regular man fighting crime should be. Funny, original, inventive, and dark, “Super” is that movie the big budget spectacle should have been, a story about a demented individual who tracks his sheer insanity with the use of his red costume and monkey wrench, fighting crime, and inevitably coming across real evil in pursuit of his own form of identity.
Frank D’Arbo is a shot order cook who loses his mind and form of potency when his wife Sarah eventually trickles in to the dark side thanks to a firm addiction to drugs and alcohol. She leaves him for mob boss Jacques, a slimy ne’er do well who poses a threat to Frank the minute we meet him. After many failed attempts to lure Sarah back to the light, Frank eventually turns to his alter ego Super, a crime fighting mastermind who shuts crime up with a monkey wrench and a whack to the head. And much as one can figure, “Super” becomes a very dark and disturbing fantasy very quickly.
Gunn is never prone to delivering exactly what audiences are expecting and throughout the tentacle porn, and jabs at comic book culture is the story of two very delusional and violent individuals who begin wreaking havoc when their own agendas for fighting crime become distorted in the middle of actual gore and utterly grotesque humor that depicts actual forms of carnage involving guns, and clubs to the head. In the middle of the delusional state their chaose will keep audiences snickering and squirming in their seat wondering why. “Super” is directed with the same propensity for dementia that most of Gunn’s productions have been, a film that involves the inevitable coming of age of a man in desperate need of some psychiatric help first and foremost.
When Super takes on a life of his own we’re introduced to Boltie, and Ellen Page simply manages to outmatch star Rainn Wilson in the realm of pure absolutely horrific dimensions bringing forth a complexity to the film that not only questions the sheer psychological aspects of the comic book kingdom, but the actual motives behind dressing up as a colorful avenger and fighting crime. Is it for justice and the American way… or some sick thrill akin to Furries and BDSM? “Super” is that James Gunn film surely to be remembered for his big break in to filmmaking, and rightly so. It’s a maddening little coming of age gem and one that guarantees to keep me referring to it as “Kick-Ass’s superior brother” for years to come.