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

Superbad Superheroes

Cine-review: KICK-ASS
15 – 117 mins – 2010
Written by: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn
Adapted from the comic book series by: Mark Miller
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Nicolas Cage, Chloe Grace Moretz, Lyndsy Fonseca, Mark Strong, Clark Duke, Evan Peters, Dexter Fletcher
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The problem with hyped-up, word-of-mouth movies is that if you don't “get” what all the fuss is about, you start to question yourself: "What am I missing?" "What is everybody else going gaga over?" "Should I give it a second viewing?" "How does it deserve 5 stars?!!" These are some of the questions plaguing me since watching Kick-Ass, the bold new 'superzero' adaptation from Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, the writer and director duo behind Stardust, which is receiving almost unanimous rave reviews from critics and cinema-goers alike.

For those critics and cinema-goers, the following will be a controversial read...

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnston) is just your everyday Peter Parker-esque high school student: he's a scrawny guy who flails when talking to the opposite sex – including the “Mary Jane” of the piece, Katie Deauxma (Desperate Housewives' Lyndsy Fonseca) – and spends his evenings online working his way through a pack of Kleenex... until he and his equally geeky classmates Marty (Clarke Duke) and Todd (Evan Peters) are mugged for the nth time and Dave dons a web-bought scuba suit to become... Kick Ass, who, most of the time, ends up getting his ass kicked and his chest stabbed (yeah, I was shocked, too), leaving him with shredded nerve endings and a higher tolerance for pain.

Meanwhile, Lex Luther-lite goon Frank D'Amico (Sherlock Holmes villian Mark Strong) is furious at the overnight online success of this costumed crime-fighter, especially when others start following the trend and taking out his henchmen: vengence-bent Damon Macready (an above average Nicolas Cage) becomes the Batman-like Big Daddy and his weapon-savvy 11 year old daughter, Mindy, becomes the purple-wigged Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz; a spritely sensation), prompting Frank's isolated son, Chris (Superbad's Christopher Mintz-Plasse, playing McLovin in all but name), to hatch an expensive sabotage plan in the form of Red Mist.

As you can see, there is a LOT going on in Kick-Ass, all of it very in-your-face, and sometimes characters and plot strands are off-screen and almost out of your memory for large chunks of the film: Marty, Todd and Katie in particular. The major issue I had with the film was there were just too many juxtaposing styles clashing awkwardly: high school humour, teen romance, superhero pastiche, comic book fantasy, gangster torture thriller, gore-soaked beat 'em up. It's fun, granted, but what is 'it' supposed to be? The film's selling point is that these are normal people playing dress up, so why does it cross over into hyper-silly fantasy with rocket powered jet packs, skyscraper damaging bazookas and walk-in microwaves?!

Kudos to Goldman and Vaughn for a complete departure from their 2007 Neil Gaiman adap to bring something new and striking to the well-worn superhero genre; Kick-Ass is everything but half-assed (*guffaw*) – and that is the problem: The violence is shockingly brutal, the gore slopped about in abundance, the language foul and the humour snigger-some. Quite how this wasn't rated '18' I will never know... It's extreme, dizzying and totally unrelenting, and with such a mixed bag you're bound to taste some flavours you want to spit out.


CR@B Verdict: Mix Watchmen's level of bloody violence, Kill Bill's stylistic idiosyncrasies, Spiderman's amiability, The Dark Knight's action and Superbad's high school humour and you have yourself a Kick-Ass cocktail. It's a potent concoction which would have gone down smoother as individual shots.
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