I wish it would Rainn down....

Super

Starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry and Nathan Fillion.

Directed by James Gunn.

I had never previously been a fan of Rainn Wilson; however, I think things are going to change with Super.

Rainn is Frank D’Arbo, a cook who, in his own words, has only had “two perfect moments in my life, which are offset by a life of pain.” Frank’s life hits the skids when his wife, Sarah (Tyler), leaves him for sleazeball drug dealer Jacques (Bacon). After having a vision which involves tentacles, Nathan Fillion in a really naff costume and the hand of god, Frank realises he’s been chosen for a very special purpose.

This epiphany has Frank donning a costume and becoming the “Crimson Bolt” – a superhero who pledges to “shut up crime”. Armed only with a pipe wrench for protection, he starts cleaning up the town from perverts, drug dealers... and people who jump in queues.

Soon enough his violent, yet hilarious, antics attract the attention of comic shop employee Libby, who becomes his sidekick, Boltie – and I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I say that their resulting relationship is anything but predictable. Things then take a dark turn, when Frank decides to save his wife from Jacques...

There have been a lot of comparisons to Kick Ass; however, Gunn reportedly came up with the idea long before Mark Millar and John Romita Junior put pen to paper with their take on a homemade superhero – an idea previously examined in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, Special, Defendor and in the criminally underrated comedy Mystery Men, starring Ben Stiller.

Gunn himself is no stranger to genre fiction of this nature. In 2000, he wrote The Specials, a film about a team of superhero misfits. Further, having been a cartoonist in a previous career, Gunn opens Super with a brilliant animated sequence and also peppers the whole film with cartoonish backgrounds – particularly when Crimson Bolt fights crime. This may well be Rainn Wilson’s breakthrough performance too – both endearing and subversively funny; meanwhile Page isn’t bad either as the sassy Libby.