Super?

The obvious way to describe this movie is 'Kickass adult style'. And while I am wondering if this movie would have been made had Kickass never happened, it isn't the same style.

This is a real-world superhero movie, with Frank D'abo receiving a vision of being touched by god and so becomes a superhero to take back his wife from the drug lord. On some level, Kickass was still comic in style, not so here. This has real world consequences Kickass didn't touch. The villain does become rather more scaled down from the king-pin figure in Kickass, the drug lord here is more of a thug with delusions of grandeur. And the violence is also more real world, and the Crimson Bolt makes mistakes. And as for Boltie...

But while being more real, this movie wants to be a super-hero movie, and be more comedic. However... this movie wants to be a lot better than it is. The humour fails on several levels, and the 'real world moments' come across as 'this is how it should be in the story' rather than as a natural part of the story. Not so much forced as just obviously scripted.

Rainn Wilson tries hard to portray Frank, as does Ellen Page with her character, but they are fighting against the lack of well-drawn-ness their character fail to have. (There could be a lot of back story to Libby, but we never see why she is the way she is.) Liv Tyler and Kevin Bacon are just phoning it in. Not even Nathan Fillion is saving this.

I wanted to like this movie, but it's 'grounded in the real world' is holding it back. Something more could be done with that concept, but not this.

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