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Director : James Gunn |
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Frank's (Rainn Wilson) perfect moments are marrying his wife (Liv Tyler) and pointing a cop in the direction of a fleeing crook. When his recovering drug addict wife, Sarah, starts hanging out his some druggies he knows he is losing her. After she leaves, Frank is broken up. Sarah is now with a drug dealer named Jock (Kevin Bacon).
When he sees a superhero on a Christian network, he gets an idea. When he tries to get her back Jock's goons beat him up. He has a vision of a superhero and of the finger of God touching his brain. The superhero tells Frank there is a plan for him. He goes to a comic store and buys some Holy Avengers comic. After talking to the clerk, Libby, he decides to become the Crimson Bolt.
Frank heads over to a street where a lot of drugs are being sold. When he gets beat up, he goes to the comic store and gets comic books with heroes without super powers. He decides on a wrench as a weapon and he begins to brutally attack criminals and he begins to make the news. When a man cuts in to the line at the movies he gets a wrench to the head, and then his girl does too.
He tries to go get Sarah back again but Jock's men have guns and he escapes but he is wounded. He goes to Libby's place and she takes care of him. A policeman comes over Frank's house to investigate and Jock's men shoot him by mistake. Libby wants to be Frank's sidekick. She comes up with the name of Boltie. They go out after a guy who keyed a friend of Libby's car and beat him to a pulp. Libby is crazier than Frank, as she almost kills him.
Two of Jock's guys catch up with frank at a gas station and Libby hits one with a car, and Frank shoots the other. Libby is once again out of her mind. Frank and Libby go to a gun store and buy some real weapons. Frank makes some weapons and bombs.
The movie gets pretty bizarre and then Frank and Libby go for Sarah. Libby slashes a guard while laughing hysterically. The next guy gets burnt and slashed. The nest one blown to pieces as Boltie celebrates. Then in a very gory scene, Boltie gets half her head blown off.
Then in a take-off on the old Batman TX show, Frank starts blowing people away as brightly colored graphics say things like KA-POW!, SPLAT!, and WHAM! To me, it was much more disturbing than funny.
In his two star review Roger Ebert says: "Super plunges into nihilistic despair in its third act. This isn't a black comedy because it isn't a comedy. It's a trick played on our expectations, I concede, but to what end? Is there any requirement that a film develop organically from beginning to end? No. There's no rule book. But audiences feel uneasy when they feel toyed with."
Roger liked it more than I did. A good cast is pretty much wasted in a film that didn't know what it wanted to be. The tone was too light to be a dark comedy and the humor was too dark to be funny. The sick humor was more sad than funny. Definitely not for young children.
The movie was really not a superhero movie. Bolt and Boltie had no superpowers. The movie is trying to portray what would happen if someone really decided to become a superhero and how, being human, the power would corrupt them. There seems to be a group of people that like this movie : it has a 6.8 rating on IMDB, which is pretty high.
