Super

Super would make for a fine chaser to Observe and Report's maximum ugly. Both deal with mental illness as a primary component in the urge to enforce order. Super details the wrench wielding adventures of Frank D'Arbo, a short-order chef with a relapsing junkie wife and a hotline to Christ. After a hentai slanted communion with the Almighty, D'Arbo sets to policing his city as The Crimson Bolt. D'Arbo's street-level lawmaking motors on a simplistic after-school morality that eventually extends to braining yuppies who break basic social contracts.

Crimson Bolt is ably assisted by Libby, a micro-hipster with a hyena laugh and a taste for ultraviolence. First encountered as a sweary pop-culture tour guide, Libby eventually becomes The Crimson Bolt's ward Boltie. Beginning as a chaste hang-out, their team-up steadily mutates into a terrifying actualisation of the super sexual dysfunction noted by Dr Fredric Wertham. Super pops thanks to Rainn Wilson's sad-sack performance. Wilson is wonderful as a queasy, stunted man hopelessly screaming into the void. The film stumbles slightly with an ending that seems to imply growth, before mutating the sentiment with a prolonged gaze at D'Arbo's bemused, frowned up fizzog. Hopefully, he's learnt nothing.