Overrated/Underpraised: HANNA vs ABDUCTION

Nathan Adams of Filmschoolrejects has started a cool new column which pits a film with undeserved love against an unfortunately ignored or ridiculed one. I'm making a similar blog, and by similar I mean the exact same. :)
Before I begin, I must offer a quick disclaimer: If you are looking for something with Hanna’s unique visual style, Abduction is not for you. It is sillier and dumber. However, seeing as the stories are pretty similar and most people are more interested in a fun action flick I am going to compare these two nevertheless (don’t worry, there are no spoilers).
Both movies feature a teenager who has been trained by their parents for combat every day of their life. Suddenly, agents claiming to be government officials show up at the teen’s doorstep and all hell breaks loose. It is actually a pretty simple plot, come to think of it.
In Hanna, the protagonist, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan of Atonement) has spent her entire childhood in the middle of the Arctic hunting deer, learning twenty different languages, and dueling her father Erik (Eric Bana). She doesn’t remember seeing another woman and she doesn’t even know what music is. Hanna decides it is time to start her life mission, and tries to assassinate the evil CIA official Marissa. She fails, and ends up on the run. Marissa (Cate Blanchett), a super-proper woman with bright red lipstick who brushes her teeth until her gums bleed, contracts a bunch of thugs to aid her own agents in killing Hanna. The fight is on.
Hanna is meant to be symbolism for growing up, and it makes sense for her enemy to be the battle-hardened artificial government agent Marissa. What makes for a good story though isn’t always a responsible choice. The effect of the movie is that not only do children growing up have no support, but every US citizen should not trust the government. And by “not trust” I mean “expect them to be corrupt child killers with no morals whatsoever.” This is particular insulting because the director (Joe Wright) is British.
It might seem like I am overthinking it, or that I am naïve to atrocities of the state. I don’t think so. If we start accepting the thinking that our government not only doesn’t have our interests at heart, but is outright lying, our society falls apart. We don’t honestly believe it—if we did there would be a much bigger outcry—but we act like it is the case all the same. If we don’t trust the government and don’t even think it can be changed, we are going to be far less likely to try and make change. A lack of trust also means a general disrespect for the law. If you start thinking not every rule applies to you, things get really screwy.
The fact of the matter is there is a clear cut right and wrong. If we live off the benefits of the government we should be accepting that we are a part of the nation. We must follow the laws because that is the only way to maintain order. It is easy to complain about little things, but the fact of the matter is the US is one of the safest and most prosperous nations in the world. The biggest advocates for a “relative system of right and wrong” are the gangs that break the law in order to keep the streets safe or to use drugs that they thing it is unfair to regulate. They are poison, but lots of wealthier, happier Americans are happy to use the drugs they distribute or disrespect the officials working to put them behind bars.
Hanna is a small part in this attitude, but it is a part. And it shouldn’t be the kind of thing we choose as entertainment.
Abduction isn’t exactly a love letter to the government, but it isn’t a conspiracy theory either. In this movie’s universe, there are corrupt agents, but on the whole we have a system that is meant for good. The young protagonist needs to work for himself and grow up, and he should not blindly trust or rely on anyone, but he isn’t alone. There are friends and allies who understand him and want to help him. The society isn’t evil and there are places he can go to seek help. As someone who is himself “coming of age” this is more realistic and more encouraging. Not to say the movie has deep messages or anything, but what it does offer is far better than your usual action flick.
The film is pretty entertaining too. We don’t have any striking visuals or sophisticated metaphors, but we have a fun, engaging story. This movie was panned by critics as it tanked at the box office, but frankly, it doesn’t deserve that kind of hate. In Abduction, the protagonist, named Nathan (think of how much lamer it would be if they came up with the title in the same way as the producers of Hanna did) has also been trained by his parents for a conflict. On the downside, the parents pretended they were only teaching him to exercise (because kick-boxing with your parents for hours every-day is totally normal). On the bright side, they didn’t make him live in the tundra. And they gave him an Ipod, so he knows all about the whole “music” thing.
Unfortunately, things turn bad when Nathan stumbles on an internet site with a picture of a child who went missing at age three. The image has been updated to show what the experts predict the child would look like, and guess what: It looks just like him. What is more, in the child picture the kid is wearing his shirt, complete with a little stain. Nathan replies to the message and confronts his parents, only to have men walk into the house claiming they are feds. A gunfight breaks out and the whole house blows up. That is only the beginning.
Nathan is a much more engaging and relatable hero than Hanna. We see he has flaws (his temper and impulsiveness) and we see that while he is good at combat he isn’t perfect. While from a marketing perspective it might have been a poor choice to choose Twilight star Taylor Lautner—he brought in girl viewers but scared off guys—he is actually pretty likable. He is struggling just the slightest bit, but it is hard not to find him charming.
The intriguing concept, fast-paced story, engaging fight scenes, and genuine acting (Michael Nyquvist, the male protagonist of the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, plays the villain) make the story an entertaining B-movie flick. Aside from a few times where we must interrupt the plot to see Lautner shirtless, the movie really has nothing wrong with it. It doesn’t aim very high, and not everyone will like it, but it satisfies its target audience and a few more people as well.
If you are looking for a teen-warrior action flick, Abduction is definitely the way to go.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (A)

You knew this day would come some day. They finally made a decent Twilight movie.

Among my many, many complaints with this series has been that the protagonist--a teenage girl named Bella--is useless, pathetic, and completely reliant on her boyfriends to the point that she would kill herself if they broke up. She does everything her vampire lover--Edward--says, and she never contradicts his creepy behavior like stealing her car's engine spark so she won't see other guys or sneaking into her room at night and watching her sleep. Worse, she obsesses over the guys she likes relentlessly and spent the last three films either trying to bed them or crying that they weren't talking to her.

Well, it has taken four movies, but Bella finally grows up. The beginning of Breaking Dawn 1 sees Bella finally marrying Edward. (One comment on that: If I get married I am not going to notify my parents by mailing them a wedding invitation, especially if I still live with them). The beginning of the movie is a touching and suspenseful look at the nervousness and excitement surrounding such an important life decision; the camera isn't just showing the drama, it is showing the little details of everyone concerned. It is very romantic, but also very real.

After the wedding, Bella and Edward go on a honeymoon to Rio and consummate their relationship while she is still human. The scene is sensual, but it isn't the gratuitous kiddy-porn New Moon and Eclipse were. Also commendable is the decision to all but ignore the sparkling vampire detail, which was interesting in the book but done so terribly in the movies even some Twi-hards apologized. Then we start to see Edward and Bella settle into marital life, and we finally see them squabbling and showing their eccentricities and being human. Then we finally get to the point of the story--Bella is pregnant with a half vampire child. It is sucking the life out of her and could very well be an antichrist. The werewolves (if you were't aware, there are werewolves in this series) want to destroy it and Edward wants Bella to get an abortion. She refuses. It is her baby and she is willing to die for it. Even Edward's threats to kill himself are useless.

Here we finally see a more realistic look at love. At what a marriage should be about, and what sacrifices couples need to make. This is what fantasy should be used to show--real life issues that we can all relate to.

The director is Bill Condon, who got an Oscar for writing (but not directing) Chicago. Oddly, the only credited writer (not counting the fact it is based on a book by The Host author Stephanie Meyers) is Melissa Rosenberg, who has written every Twilight movie. It is interesting to see them hire Condon but not have him edit the script to fit his own vision seeing as he is primarily a writer, but it totally works (he did direct a few films including Dreamgirls). The movie has a unique visual style that still fits with the first three's, and the camera lingers on every detail and entraps the viewers in the story. The team behind Eclipse did a better job with the battle sequences, but the fight scenes in this, while shorter and choppier, are still above average. Cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, who did a bunch of Guillermo Del Toro's films including Pan's Labyrinth, is great, as usual. I completely agree with the Art Director's Guild to nominate this film for their annual award. It might even get an Oscar nod in this category.

Kristin Stewart does her weird mouth-breathing thing, but is still good (she has never been the problem in the series). Taylor Lautner (as Jacob, the werewolf who loves Bella), seems a little over his head in this darker installment--he isn't serious enough. As for Robert Pattinson (who plays Edward), after his decent job in Remember Me I am not yet going to say he is a bad actor, but I will say he is awful in this (as he has been in every Twilight movie). His emotions are depressed, petulant, and comatose. Maybe it is his attempts to hide his British accent. At least the make-up job is better than before. The worst acting, though, comes from a thirty second clip halfway through the end credits featuring the Volturi (vampire royalty), all of whom are so laughably awful it is hard to believe they aren't trying to be bad. They have got to have given the worst performance of the year, and they are in the movie for literally thirty seconds! This atrociousness is balanced out by Billy Burke as Bella's father, who nearly brought me to tears. Some day someone should give him a good role.

In the beginning of this review I called this movie "decent." In fact, loathe as I am to admit it, I think it's really pretty awesome!

3-D Report: November

Sorry this is late. Computer troubles and troubles with this site have been very trying recently.

3-D movies can be done well and they can be done badly. Unfortunately, people have seen too many movies with the bad kind of 3-D and thus think that they hate the format when in fact they really don't know it. I am compiling a report of the quality of 3-D for every month. Some of the movies could still be in theaters so you could consider seeing them based on this, or watch these if you have a 3-D player when they arrive on DVD. Or at least read this years later when 3-D home viewing is easier to come by. Still, the biggest reason I write this is that I hope readers who have seen the movies in 3-D will know how that movies' 3-D compares to other movies' 3-D. Then there might be less of a negative view towards what is in truth a great new invention. 

Before reading this some people willlikely think "I hate 3-D because the glasses darken the image so much." Sometimes this is the case but I will tell you if it is. Now, obviously, if you watch the movie in 3-D and take off your glasses in the middle you will notice how much brighter the screen is. THAT DOES NOTE MEAN THE 2-D IS THAT BRIGHT--a well-made movie will lighten the 3-D version with the expectation it will be darkened by wearing glasses. It sounds simple but you would be surprised how many people think that a 3-D version viewed without glasses is the same as an out-of-focus 2-D one. The movies are presented in chronological order.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

When you absolutely loath something, it’s difficult to see the good in it. So take this with a grain of salt.

Harold and Kumar 3 is not very good 3D. The depth perception is all wrong. It looks nothing like what real life does. Hard to explain, but if you see it, you will be annoyed.

Or maybe not. Its not the worst I’ve ever seen, and—as I said—my hatred for the film is probably affecting it. Still, I am frustrated by how the film is treating 3D as a gimmick. It uses it as a joke, and the effect is that 3D is only a gimmick for bad movies. When people like Martin Scorcese and James Cameron are working so hard for it to be a genuine art-form, it is annoying that a movie uses it in such an irreverent and poorly-made fashion.

Don’t judge 3D by this movie.*

*Please note this only applies if you have already seen the movie. If you haven’t, under no conditions watch it. Ever.

Immortals

For all his obnoxious comments about how they “make this kind of movie all the time in India,” he does genuinely create unique and stunning visuals. In his first 3D picture, he uses the format to great effect.

There are no problems with focus or color. Whatever errors occur in depth don’t matter to much because everything is so surreal. And cool. With the dark imagery contrasted by bright red and gold, the bizarre costumes, and some of the weirdest settings ever, it’s riveting. The 3D adds just the extra touch of grandeur to keep you fixed on every scene.

The only problem is that, like every single fantasy for adults, every image has been digitally darkened. The 2D image looks the exact same as the 3D does when glasses are worn, but many people will see it as yet another example of 3D darkening the original image. Don’t be one of those people.

Happy Feet Two

Ever seen an old movie from the mid-30s and laughed at how obvious it was that the characters were on a stage with a giant painting behind them? It was because the cinematography and focus were so much better they showed far more detail than filmmakers were used to, and now the old backdrops looked dumb.

Happy Feet Two in 3D looks like that. It is pretty funny, since while the penguins are people in motion-capture suits, the backgrounds are almost entirely computer generated images. The 3D is great for about 300 feet in the (fake) setting, but then it suddenly loses most of its three-dimensionality. The effect

is that these penguins live on a little ice sheet surrounded by elaborately painted walls.

Other than that, the 3D is pretty good. There are no focus or color errors, and the depth is great in the close-up shots. And having no 3D background certainly beats The Smurf’s superfocus, where everything is so vivid and clear and 3D you have no clue what to look at.

Arthur Christmas

This 3D isn’t quite the 3D on Kung Fu Panda and Cars 2 that leaves you flabbergasted by its beauty, but it is pretty great. Since everything is created on a computer, we have no error with color, depth, or focus. There are few moments where we really see they have 3D for a reason—nothing flying out at you, and no shots with an endless horizon. However, it does give an added touch that will get you more involved in the story. If you like 3D, you will like this. If you are a little less pleased with it, you can skip it.

Hugo

I think I’ll just quote what I said in my review:

“Richard Richardson (Wall Street, both Kill Bills, The Aviator, Inglorious Basterds…) is cinematographer, and along with Scorcese does a great job. This is probably the most beautiful to look at live action film of the year. Just as importantly, Scorcese makes near-perfectly layered, near-perfectly focused 3D (the film was mostly shot in the format). At a time when most older and drama-orientated filmmakers are denying the benefits of the format, Scorcese is proving that this technique definitely has a lot to offer (and the high 3D percentage of the film’s gross shows people have notice).”

Yeah. It is amazing 3D. Incredible. A great movie too.

Well, that’s all. See you at the movies.

The Descendants (A+)

The Descendants is a great film. Not a perfect one, but a great one.
The story (based on a book and written/directed by About Schmidt and Sideways’ Alexander Payne) has two main plotlines, ones which do eventually converge. The first is the protagonist (a middle-aged, financially-successful lawyer)’s attempts to come to terms with the inevitable death of his comatose wife and his new role as a single parent. The second is of that same man’s struggle with selling 250,000 acres of Hawaiian land his family inherited. (He is in charge of a trust, and the state says individuals can’t own all that land; besides which, some of his cousins are in financial difficulty and need the cash). I will start by discussing the problems of this move. These would be the characters. I won’t say they are two-dimensional—we actually see much depth and emotions of each—but I would say they are bland. Matt, the protagonist, is a nice guy who hasn’t been spending enough time with his family. We see his heartache, his past, his mistakes, his thinking—it’s just there is nothing unique there. He isn’t stupid, he isn’t created simplistically: He just is created to be as relatable as possible, and has lost any real flaws or personality. George Clooney was probably not the best choice to play him, either. The thinking was undoubtedly to cast a guy who plays slick, successful men and place him—as his usual character—in a situation where he must realize this persona is merely a persona. It doesn’t work: Clooney is too handsome, too likeable, and too charismatic to be relatable. Matt is just like all his other characters—Danny Ocean, for example—interesting and in-depth, but more someone we want to be than someone we are.
The Secret Life of an American Teenager’s Shailene Woodley plays the older of his daughters, and while less blame falls on her acting, the character still comes off as uninteresting. We see motivation, emotion, and personality; it’s just that there is nothing unique about it. She is an angry teenager, she is into sex and drugs because of course she is. She wears very revealing swimsuits because the audience needs to know she is a contrast to the conservative Matt. She nurtures her sister, she gets into bad relationships, she secretly cares about her dad… We get a lot about her, but none of it surprises us.
Her boyfriend is a stoner/slacker. We see he has some hidden charm, but we don’t really see someone who we say “oh, that’s just like so-and-so.” Matt’s other daughter is a rebellious pre-teen—she is desperate to go through puberty, she likes using her middle finger. She is exactly the sort of character who we can connect any girl to, but she isn’t one who we can distinguish.
So, why did I love the film? Actually, I didn’t love it. It was a bit depressing while at the same time a little too hopeful; and I really couldn’t connect with any of the characters. But I see it is dealing with something great. Every interaction sparks with depth, every scene builds suspense, you want to laugh and cry at the same time during every minute of it.
I have not yet had to deal with the loss of a family member. I am not fifty-years-old. I have never had a fight with my wife. In fact, I’ve never had a wife. Hopefully these things will happen. When they do, I think I’ll appreciate the movie more. I don’t think I’ll ever find Matt or his daughters unique or relatable characters, but I think I will be touched by the themes more.
This film spends two hours carefully crafting something epic. It isn’t as much a story as a piece of a life. There is definitely a climax—the characters do change. But it is more just a look at what people have to do, because that is what life is like.
And in a way, it is strangely comforting.

Hugo (A)

Martin Scorcese’s violent, gritty dramas are consistent critical hits. I don’t think anyone would mind if he kept making them, and I don’t think anyone would blame him for it. This is a guy who has found what he is good at, proven it to everyone else, and has the means to ensure he continue at it.
However, Scorcese surprises everyone by moving far outside of his comfort zone with a 3D, visually-oriented family film. This embrace of new ideas and new technologies sets an example for why attempting to innovate new technologies and not stick to the status quo would be reason enough to like Hugo, but better still is that mixed with the visually stunning images is a compelling story. Scorcese and screenwriter John Logan have made an excellent film that most everyone can enjoy.
Brian Selznick’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret is adapted into a screenplay by John Logan, a writer of The Last Samurai and The Aviator. The center of the story is to inspire an appreciation of cinema and encourage the preserving of old films, but it also has some important things to say about dealing with the past and how it relates to the future. Obviously, analyzing it in great detail would give away the plot, but I can assure you it is very well done.
The movie is about an orphan boy (named Herbert or something) who lives in a Parisian railway station operating the clocks after his father (Jude Law) dies in a fire. One of the few things he has left is an animatron (aka mechanical doll) that is meant to write or draw something. Problem is it is in poor repair, and even if Hugo can fix it he still misses the key to get it to start. When an elderly man (Ben Kingsley) who runs a toy shop in the station catches him stealing the parts needed to rebuild the robot, he takes the boy’s book containing all of the designs for the animatron. The man’s adopted daughter (Chloe Grace Mortez) agrees to help him get it back, and the two begin to discover the man has a dark secret.
Asa Butterfield proves to be a rising star worth watching in the title role, and the supporting cast is great as well. Special note should go to the always charming Emily Mortimer as the owner of a flower shop and Sacha Baren Cohen as the station inspector determined to send the protagonist to an orphanage. If you are thinking that perhaps an orphanage is a safer place for a pre-teen boy than a train station that is a very good question, but the film resolves this dilemma in a satisfactory, if not perfect, manner.
Richard Richardson (Wall Street, both Kill Bills, The Aviator, Inglorious Basterds…) is cinematographer, and along with Scorcese does a great job. This is probably the most beautiful to look at live action film of the year. Just as importantly, Scorcese makes near-perfectly layered, near-perfectly focused 3D (the film was mostly shot in the format). At a time when most older and drama-orientated filmmakers are denying the benefits of the format, Scorcese is proving that this technique definitely has a lot to offer (and the high 3D percentage of the film’s gross shows people have notice).
A fear many parents have is that their children will not enjoy it. This is understandable, but most kids will find the compelling story quite entertaining. Not as much so as, say, Arthur Christmas, but enough to justify taking them to it. And adults will enjoy this much more.
Hugo is a gorgeous and touching adventure, and one definitely worth checking out.

Fast Five (D-)

I generally reserve my DVD reviews for limited releases that no one got a chance to see in theaters. However, for a movie like Fast Five, I’ll make an exception. The reason: It was well-reviewed, made a ton of money, and was really bad.
Anyway, this movie is really bad. It doesn’t try to be anything amazing, it just wants to be a not-to-serious adventure. It is a really bad not-to-serious adventure.
While I admit I have not seen every entry in the Fast and Furious saga, from what I have watched I can say this is not particularly worse than the others. The center of the story has been moved away from street racing, probably because the number of explosions and sheer scale of location damage shown on screen has eradicated any credulity to an illegal sport of 200+mph racing in downtown LA (or Tokya, or Mexico City, or whatever exotic location the current film is shooting in). Not that we don’t see the occasional crowd—of easily 200 people—gathered for this mythical event in downtown Rio.
Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) escapes from his lengthy prison sentence in the opening scene when his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and her boyfriend Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker)swerves a car in front of the prison bus he is in. The ensuing collision flips the bus over, but leaves Walker’s car unharmed, because he is very skilled at this sort of thing. He learned it when he was working for the FBI to infiltrate street racing gangs.
Now the three of them become mercenaries, and decide to steel some cars taken from drug-dealers. However, when they try to renegotiate the terms of the agreement in the middle of the act, their “teammates” lose it and end up killing three government officials. Angry at the brutality of these gangsters, the Torettos and O’Connor decide they are going to use the intell they stole to rob the entire fortune from the gangs, which is well over $100 million.
Unfortunately, a US agent (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is intent on capturing them. The Rio official (Elsa Petaky) helping him begins to suspect that maybe they didn’t kill those federal agents after all, but is told that “our job is just to hunt down names we are given.” What isn’t noted is that if the Torettos hadn’t been working with the gangsters no one would have died, and in many countries they are just as guilty regardless of who pulled the trigger. Also, Toretto deserved to go to jail in the first place because organized crime and smuggling drugs is illegal.
$1.3 billion is the amount of our taxes that was used to help fund Mexico’s work in fighting organized crime that is distributing weapons and drugs and perpetrating violence in both nations. While the majority of viewers are totally safe from this, it is pathetic to glorify gangs and smuggling. There is no such thing as “good gangsters” and “bad gangsters.” There is a such thing as people who openly support and aid a corporation that is actively fighting the US and Mexican government, and then there is a such thing as honest people trying to catch them. Then there are rich Americans who try to act like the gangsters or pretend they are some kind of heroes and inadvertently hide the atrocities they are doing.
Fast Five has several other flaws. To begin with, the dumb plot holes. There is no effort in making a coherent story. Sure, the movie is better than most at writing interesting situations and interactions. But it is terrible at explaining how the police chief can make sure only the corrupt cops arrive at the massive explosion filled car chase that is leveling city blocks in downtown Rio.
When two of the good guys must gain a crimelord’s fingerprint, the female one (Gal Gadot) says “never send a man to do a woman’s job” and then strips to very skimpy underwear and seduces the criminal, gaining the fingerprinton her panties when he massages it. Seeing as this is her single contribution to the entire heist, I think some offense should be taken that that is what “a woman’s job” is.
Lyndon B. Johnson once said “Organized crime constitutes nothing less than a guerilla war against society.” I hope when the next Fast and Furious film hits theaters, viewers keep that idea in mind.

Overrated/Underpraised: Kick Ass & Super

Nathan Adams of Filmschoolrejects has started a cool new column which pits a film with undeserved love against an unfortunately ignored or ridiculed one. I'm making a similar blog, and by similar I mean the exact same. :)

For the first entry in my Overrated/Underpraised, I hope to shed the light on an overlooked picture from this year as well as tackling one of last year's disappointments that received lots of undeserved praise.

In order to see all the flaws in Kick-Ass, it is imperative to read the comic book first. Written by Mark Millar (who generally does actual super-hero books), it is a very dark but extremely funny look at the psychology of a society as shown through an original take on the vigilante/super-hero tail. With all its in-jokes and unique (and yes, sometimes shocking, subject matter) it was perfect for the comic community, but perhaps not a good fit for a mainstream film audience. Matthew Vaughn (who was then known for Layer Cake) was a die-hard fan of the series, but was obviously too nervous to carry the story all the way through. You see, the overall story of Kick-Ass the book is of a well-meaning (though perhaps self-centered) person who's attempts to inspire justice leads to anarchy and recklessness that leads to countless preventable deaths. The characters in the book are living a fantasy life, and the irony is that they never realize it, taking on the mantle of Batman, Spider-man, and Joker rather then live their boring actual lives. It is rather depressing if you think about it, and Vaughn either chose not to or decided no one else would want to.

The movie plays as a tongue-in-cheek yet at heart straight-forward action tale with "originality" provided by R-rated violence and language. At first it seems like good fun, but on closer inspection one sees glaring inconstancies. The book shows through hear and there, and it doesn't fit the atmosphere of the movie.

In addition to these faults is Vaughn's typical obsession with adding sex and nudity that wasn't in the source material. It is all PG-13 level, but it is gratuitous and unhealthy and a totally unneeded and unwelcome addition to the story. Also, the picture could do without the marijuana use.

Those who enjoyed it were not thinking deeply enough into it, which is lazy and unhealthy. (You should always try to be aware of what a movie telling you, or else you are susceptible to a subliminal message. Also, you get to sound pretentious as you tell everyone about it.) Those who didn't were met with the response by Vaughn and his fans that the adult subject matter wasn't there thing. Vaughn had the nerve to say this to Roger Ebert, except Ebert clearly states in his review that he is disappointed because he liked the book and the movie didn't live up to its source material.

If you try to explain to a fan why the movie isn't all that good, you will definitely here the statement above. However, if you press, you will be told that some of the books elements had to be compromised in order to reach a mainstream audience (the always optimistic Millar said just that).

Enter Super, a film that refuses to compromise anything. Released about a year after Kick-Ass, it was never intended for a large audience. However, with its impressive cast (Rainn Wilson, Ellen Paige, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon…) writer/director James Gunn (Slither) must have hoped for a better reaction than he got. The picture made just $324k and received middling reviews. The picture certainly has its flaws, but this tackles the same idea as the renowned Kick-Ass and comes away with something far larger.

Wilson plays a developmentally-challened, mild-mannered man approaching middle age who is heartbroken when a nasty drug dealer (Bacon) reintroduces his wife (Tyler) to drugs and steels her away. After a few weeks sobbing in his bedroom, the person everybody laughed at has garbed a super costume and taken to the streets to bring justice vigilante-style. The picture is a comedy, but it is hard for people to reach it as we see people we genuinely care about suffer humiliating and miserable circumstances. Kick-Ass gives the audience a distance from its story by making it a revenge-fantasy, Super makes us feel the horror as we see our hero lose himself in something entirely relatable but irrevocably violent. We do get to the humor though, and it is in much the vein as Kick-Ass--when the hero, aka the "Crimson Bolt," is approached by a young woman (Paige) wanting to be a sidekick we see how so much of the desire to "protect justice" is more a desire for a more exciting, adrenaline-filled life. The vigilantes begin doing totally unheroic activities, and like Kick-Ass the public takes a macabre glee in it all.

Unlike Kick-Ass, we get a character driven conclusion. I am not going to spoil it, but what we see is a window into why we really dream of super-heroes: A world where good really does win, but also a deep longing for personal connections. It sounds corny here, but the movie makes us feel the message due to our intense connection with the characters. A connection Kick-Ass the book never intended and Kick-Ass the movie tried to tack on but utterly failed at.

Super isn't necessarily a flop. It could hopefully find its footing on DVD. And I assure you it is a far superior, far more poignant tale than Kick-Ass, and due to this is far funnier. So, shut up crime and let it get recognized as the true vigilante-comedy.