Shut up, Crime!

Blu Review: SUPER
18 – 92mins – 2010
Written by: James Gunn
Directed by: James Gunn
Starring: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, Gregg Henry, Michael Rooker, Andre Royo, Sean Gunn, Stephen Blakehart, Nathan Fillion, Linda Cardellini, Rob Zombie
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The second film I’ve watched in a fortnight which takes its bow on home video despite the kind of considerable star clout you would normally expect to carry a film to multiplexes with ease. But while The Resident (reviewed HERE) was a genre flick from an iconic studio which was overshadowed by a bigger hitter, James Gunn’s Super is a positively tiny indie production so audacious and unpredictable it borders on schizophrenic, which also suffers from being released in the trail of a major blazer with a spookily analogous concept.*

Super is another ordinary-sap-decides-to-fight-crime-in-a-homemade-outfit comedy – although when I say comedy I do mean it in the blackest sense imaginable; seriously, the ‘18’ rating is well and truly earned here with a torrent of uber-violent, uber-profane and uber-uncomfortable scenes which are just as likely to make your jaw drop as chuckle in amusement. Rainn “Dwight Schrute” Wilson is perfectly pitiable as Frank D’Arbo, a bitter and enraged sad sack who takes the law into his own hands after his junkie wife Sarah (Tyler) runs off with conceited dealer Jacques (Bacon).

Inspired by a religious TV mascot (Nathan Fillion cameoing as “The Holy Avenger”) and touched by the “Finger of God” (voiced by Rob Zombie) in a surreal dream sequence involving a lobotomy and alien tentacles borrowed straight out of Gunn’s 2006 tongue-in-cheek sci-fi Slither, Frank believes it is his destiny to become “The Crimson Bolt”, a superhero with absolutely no super powers whatsoever, but a startling proclivity for smashing small time criminals around the head - with a monkey wrench. The scene in which he crushes the skulls of two queue jumpers at a movie theatre is both hysterical and disturbing in its graphic excessiveness.

The brilliant Ellen Page (Smart People, Whip It!, Inception) is as infectiously exuberant as ever as comic-store-clerk-cum- kid-sidekick “Boltie” (real name Libby). Her enthusiasm to join Frank's questionably delusional cause veers from excitable to dangerously unsettling yet it's hard to see her as anything but adorable (well, except in one scene...) and she frequently steals the show (“What the fuck's a 'Robin' anyway?!”).

As this frankly atrocious crime fighting duo ransack the town in their quest to keep the streets clean of scum (“Don't steal! Don't deal drugs! Don't molest kids! You don't butt!”) the comedy ranges from the raucous to the awkward – this is, after all, a real world diegesis where they look like twats and can't fight for shit – but as the film heads for its climax and Frank sets out to win back Sarah from Jacques' drug-peddling clutches the death toll rises exponentially as, somewhat contradictorily, the film reveals its very human heart.

Crucially, no matter how diabolically brutal the ass kicking or excessive the gore (and, trust me, it is), you're still willing Frank to win; to overturn injustice and make something of his depressing and uninteresting little life. Super certainly isn't for everyone: you'll either love the savagery or be appalled by it, but after watching this last night and initially grading it with an ambivalent “3 ticks” my appreciation grew throughout today and I'm now looking back on its kooky, outlandish qualities with inflated affection. "The Crimson Bolt" and "Boltie" will definitely be getting a second spin in this CR@B's crib.


In a CR@B Shell: Barmy, brutal and sadist, yet concurrently gut-busting and bizarrely sympathetic, James Gunn's multifarious Super is a highly-strung and subversive off-beat treat for fans of twisted, insolent comedy – but it's definitely a perturbed little pup.
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* You already know which film I'm referring to, so I won’t mention it by name like EVERY other critic thus far has done, but I will link to my REVIEW, ever desperate am I for some cross promotion :-b

Teenage Mutant Hero Freakshow

Cine Review: X-MEN: FIRST CLASS
12A – 135mins – 2011
Story by: Bryan Singer and Sheldon Turner
Screenplay by: Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn
Based on the comic book miniseries created by: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Chris Claremont
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, January Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Till, Edi Gathegi, Jason Flemyng, Álex González, Ray Wise, Oliver Platt
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Controversially, I have always had very much a take-them-or-leave-them attitude towards the big screen adventures of Marvel Comic’s popular mutant super squad: even the much-lauded X2 didn’t swing my opinion. In point of fact I fell asleep during X-Men: The Last Stand and to this day have yet to rewatch it, while the least well-received critically – X-Men Origins: Wolverine – I honestly didn’t mind, although I recognised it for the shallow blockbuster it was and nothing more.

X-Men: First Class however, as the title implies, is set before all of these – taking us right back to the very beginning; before Charles “Professor X” Xavier (McAvoy) was bald and before Erik “Magneto” Lehnsherr (Fassbender) was wrinkly, when the adversaries were friends united in the same cause before a rather monumentous difference of opinion regarding mutant-kind’s association with humans forced an X-shaped wedge between them which saw them take very divergent paths…

Set predominantly in the 1960s before a very real backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis, First Class sees Xavier and Lehnsherr fly around the globe recruiting those with unique superhuman abilities to join their resistance and live out and proud, in the shadows no more. During the two hour bonanza we are introduced to youthful depictions of “Mystique” (Lawrence), “The Beast” (Skins’ Hoult), “Angel” (Kravitz), “Banshee” (Landry Jones), “Havoc” (Till), “Darwin” (Gathegi), “Riptide” (González) and “Azazel” (Flemyng) – it’s quite an ensemble cast and some players get far more attention than others.

There are a cascade of ret-con explanations for how each of the character’s got their nicknames (it’s rather unspectacular to be honest), how “Magneto” came by his iconic metal helmet, how Xavier came to be paralysed and wheelchair-bound, and even a nifty cameo for a certain gnarled adamantium-clawed icon (whose origin has, of course, already been mauled to death).

They are the kind of fan-friendly winks to the audience which are neat when used sparingly but can get somewhat tiresome en mass. However, First Class compliments the call-backs (or should that be call-forwards?) with its own distinct story in its own distinct era. To claim it’s a reinvention or fresh start akin to Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, however, is somewhat misrepresentative: this is very much the same Bryan Singer-produced X-verse, merely earlier.

Kevin Bacon mines his devious Hollow Man persona as former Nazi soldier turned megalomaniac mutant nemesis Sebastian Shaw who is hell-bent on causing nuclear war and bringing mankind to its knees. He isn’t quite as imposing or memorable as a comic book supervillian should be (particularly not when he surrounds himself with scantily clad lovely January Jones as Emma Frost), but you’ll certainly sympathise with vengeful Lehnsherr for wanting him dead.


In a CR@B Shell: Cooler and more collected than most hyperactive comic book blockbusters, X-Men: First Class manages to intertwine itself in the Marvel super-team’s expansive legacy whilst also telling a distinctive tale all its own. Whether we necessary needed a prequel, however, is something of a moot point…
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