Super

James Gunn is a clever genre filmmaker, and while his dark superhero comedy, Super, is occasionally cringe-inducingly discomfiting, one never has the feeling that the writer-director has lost control of the tone of the work. Rainn Wilson stars as Frank, a socially awkward short-order cook married to the beautiful Sarah (Liv Tyler). When Sarah leaves him for a sleazy drug-dealer, Jacques (Kevin Bacon), Frank falls into despair, but he soon has a vision of how to fight back; he becomes a wrench-wielding avenger, the Crimson Bolt. With the help of an equally unhinged comic-book store clerk (Ellen Page), he takes on his oppressors with disturbingly bloody, bone-cracking results. Super takes the unfulfilled promise of Kick-Ass, and follows through with a deranged degree of commitment. It kicks off with a charmingly off-kilter animated opening credit sequence that promises more than the film ultimately delivers. The supporting cast is good, with Page in particular enlivening things with an untethered energy. She finds humanity in her cartoonish character that eludes Wilson, who plays the damaged, desperate Frank in off-puttingly broad strokes and never quite inhabits him. Super still works surprisingly well, at times simultaneously brutal and funny, and, in the end, Gunn wrings surprising pathos from these tormented souls.