Rainn Wilson walks a well-tread path as Frank D’Arbo, a man so uncomfortable in his skin that he creates an alter ego, The Crimson Bolt, to justify his existence and add to the “two perfect moments” in his pitiful life. One is his marriage to Sarah (Liv Tyler), a former alcoholic drug addict who has recently fallen into old habits and been stolen away by the pin-striped-suit wearing villainous drug dealer, Jock (Kevin Bacon). The other was when he pointed a police officer toward a fleeing criminal. As per D’Arbo, these brief moments “offset a life of pain, humiliation, and rejection” that prompts him to lament his “silly face” and awful “personality.”
If nothing else, Super establishes Wilson as an actor with capabilities beyond the narcissistic, beet-farming, oft-insane Dwight Schrute from The Office. There are moments of silliness reminiscent of Schrute, but Wilson’s eyes convincingly bespeak the pain and frustration of a man lost in a life that has “been plagued by visions” that include the transmogrification of his friends into demons, a wall-perched Jesus, and aliens that slice open his skull cap to touch his brain with “the finger of God.” In short, D’Arbo is an island, and just might be suffering from delusional schizophrenia.
Regardless, he needs to cling to something. First, it is Sarah, whom he brings to an AA meeting. But when she is drugged and taken away, he veers toward the Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillian), a personification of Christian Righteousness that fights the recurring villain Demonswill (James Gunn, who also directed) and repeatedly saves two teens on the brink of transgression. But before their “nipple rings” make them do anything rash, Holy Avenger intercedes and sets them back on the path to purity.
The character itself, while fictional in the film, is intriguing in that he represents the propagandizing properties of certain superheroes throughout history – think Captain America, who, as the most recent film suggests, was a marketing gimmick much more than a superhero. The Holy Avenger is merely righteousness masquerading as a superhero, creating an idyllic figure for children and teens. His actions are subdued but his rhetoric is extreme, demonizing anything outside of purity and virginity. He establishes the “rules” that he deems appropriate to follow, but in doing such, he leaves little gray area. There is evil, or there is good. The Crimson Bolt creates a similar methodology. Stalking the night and spending most of the time concealed by dumpsters, Bolt waits for evildoers: drug dealers, child molesters and pickpockets, but he doesn’t mete out justice so much as violence.
His first encounter with a drug dealer finds Bolt fleeing the scene and a bit bruised. For his subsequent encounters, he is armed with a wrench, a weapon that he deems worthy because of its ability to crush a melon, a rather ominous foreshadowing of its eventual use. The Bolt’s chosen weapon is not used as a deterrent; it is used to bludgeon and create a catharsis. The anger within our avenger boils over and each criminal’s head is smashed, bringing each one to the brink of death. However, his rhetoric is the same as the Holy Avenger: “the rules haven’t changed,” and if you don’t abide by the rules, you are punished, something straight out of Leviathan or Deuteronomy in Old Testament.
So that our hero can remain likable, he ultimately realizes that he is the crime that he’s fighting, or telling to “shut up!” so he begins to restrain himself and becomes the teacher to his young, de-sublimated, sadistic sidekick, Boltie (Ellen Page). While cute and often comical, her character is a bit unnecessary and, at times, over-the-top. Sure, she’s there to mature our main protagonist, but she’s also unnecessarily hypersexed and kind of annoying. However, she does help to bring out the strength of the Super: its look at what “happens between the panels” in a comic book.
This reference is initially uttered as Boltie and Bolt share an almost-intimate moment in D’Arbo’s garage, but its deeper exploration is into violence – something that Super is inundated with. Throughout, blood oozes and splatters, limbs are amputated, bodies are exploded, skulls are shattered, and the wrench is plunged into craniums. After a while, this becomes a bit much, and, ostensibly, it feels as if Gunn veered off track and needed to save a film via an exploration of snuff. But the truth is that this is what happens between the balloon-encompassed “Thuds,” “Thwacks,” “Pows,” “Booms” and “Bangs” within the comic book frames. In a way, Super exposes the curse of omission within comics. The superhero seeks to rid an area of crime, so he or she takes to the streets and subdues evildoers. However, the blood is neatly drawn and contained in delicate streams – or simply summarized by a jagged voice bubble that contains an electricity-riddled “Smack.”
This conflicts with the image of a wrench-cracked skull and the subsequent waterfall of blood that covers a face and pools on concrete. The same contradiction is illustrated when Boltie eagerly accuses Jerry of keying her friend’s new “Volkswagon.” Our heroes ring the offender’s door bell and attack him with kicks and punches. Unaware of why he’s being attacked, Jerry fights back until Boltie brings a glass vase down onto the left side of his head. In a comic or another movie, the villain would fall unconscious, drifting off to sleep and momentarily subdued. Super defies this rhetoric by showing Jerry’s mangled face stuff with glass shards. His hands tremble, unsure of whether to pull out each jagged piece or guard his face from further damage as pints of blood soak the carpet on which he lies writhing in pain.
Amidst the violence in Super, there is a reality we are unaccustomed to in comic renditions. The shame here is that, although this movie was in production around the same time, its release was heavily overshadowed by Kick Ass, a superior film on a number of levels insomuch as it goes beyond the exploration of violence and looks deeper into the origins of a superhero.
Overall, Super is worth a look and has darkly comical moment that elicit both chuckles and squirms, but the ending is a bit too neat and filled with hope. I suppose this is warranted since much of the rest of the film is swimming in blood and broken skulls, but if the auteur was going “anti-comic,” why end in such a comic fashion?
