Super

This movie surprised the hell out of me. Much better than I expected going into it. This was truly an impressive indie film.

'Super' follows Frank (Rainn Wilson), an average guy who is a cook at a diner, who has led a remarkably boring life. This changes when his wife (Liv Tyler) runs off with the drug dealer 'Jock' (Kevin Bacon) without a note or a reason why. After the police turn a deaf ear to his plea for assistance, Frank takes the law into his own hands and becomes the vigilante The Crimson Bolt. Over the movie we see this everyday crime fighter go from a truly awkward spectacle to behold to a truly fearsome agent of wrath.

The story was both what made this movie work, but what also more than likely what made this movie a mainly underground success. The movie opened a scant two months after Kick-Ass, which follows a similar plot, but had a budget over ten times the size of Super with major studio support. The story was pretty decent, there were a few parts I didn't agree with and thought should have been rewritten or removed completely from the movie.

The acting was not only impressive, but who they were able to hire was impressive. Being able to hire Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, Ellen Page, Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion and Rainn Wilson and still have enough from your 2.5 million dollar budget to make a full length, well shot movie is a feat, and definitely tells us that some of these actors definitely lowered their rates because they just wanted to be involved in the project. Rainn Wilson was great in the movie, he had a rough start for me, but by the end I was totally sold with his performance. I also found it kind of hilarious that this was Nathan Fillion's second role as a kind of lame super hero, the first being Captain Hammer in "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog".

The look and feel of the movie was a lot grittier than I was expecting Lots of muted and earthy colors, which really makes the few times that there is a cartoon-y special effect really stand out. The special effects were done old school. Blood pumps and the like instead of the growing use of digital blood. I liked the style that the effects were used, but there were a few time I think they were just over-used and distracting.

Final Judgement:

'Super' delivers a good story, but some of the special effectsmight be argued that either held it back or added to its charm. The characters develop nicely and the story moves fluidly at a good pace. This movie is on Netflix and is definitely worth finding a home in your queue.

Score: ★★★★★★★★☆☆