Sunset Superman (also known as Don't Mess With Grandma) is a comedy home invasion film that features lots of fighting over its eighty minute runtime. Written and directed by Jason Krawczyk (He Never Died) this features comedic villains who are less 'The Strangers' and more the Wet Bandits.
Michael Jai White (Black Friday, Black Dynamite) is Jasper - a former soldier who now delivers meals to the elderly. This is something he also does in his own time as he makes a frequent five hour drive to visit his no nonsense elderly grandma (Jackie Richardson - Extreme Measures, Catwalk TV series) at her remote home. He wishes for her to move to a home for the elderly closer to where he lives as he is concerned for her living in such a remote location, but she refuses due to the home being filled with memories of her deceased husband. While visiting her one night, he discovers some home intruders who he promptly beats up and throws out the house. This begins a night of mayhem as more and more intruders appear, determined to rob the property. Equally determined to protect his oblivious gran from these intruders, Jasper and his gran's dog Rufus battle everyone who tries to break into the home.
The incompetent invaders are a comedic bunch who reminded me of the crooks from Home Alone, though this is more of an adult version of that. There is plenty of swearing and some gnarly looking scenes of violence. The most bloody scene being one set in a bathroom where one of the attackers has been ravaged by Rufus. There were also lots and lots of action, over the course of the film Jasper has to battle more and more people, but built like a brick wall, this is something he is able to do, despite a bad knee. It leads to some exciting scenes of him battling what appears to be dozens of people all at once, attacking him with a variety of weapons from a bow and arrow to knives and planks of wood. The choreography of these scenes seemed to get better over the film, with people stumbling down flights of stairs and being thrown through the air in satisfyingly pictured ways.
There was a decent enough set-up for why Jasper can't call for help (the mainline telephone wire was cut and the antagonists had his mobile phone), but there wasn't a decent reason provided for why the many windows and doors of the house were left wide open the whole night. You would think after the first five or six break-ins that Jaspar would have made sure they were all locked, but I guess that wouldn't have made for such an exciting movie.
Jasper made for a protagonist who was easy to root for. He may be super strong but he also doesn't really want to have to hurt the people attacking the home. It is only due to being forced to protect his gran that he has to resort to more and more violence, though ensures that he never actually kills anyone even when they want him dead. I liked Richardson's role of the grandma, with her being a bit deaf and not having the best eyesight it isn't as farcical as it might otherwise be, with her managing to never find out about all the potential danger she is near to. The antagonists were the most amusing of the characters here, in particular I thought Evan Stern (The Void, Robocop remake) as Ted was the best of the lot, a funny character. The attackers for the most part look like normal people, and have the fighting skills of normal people. This makes their relentless but often half-hearted assaults on Jasper and the house all the more amusing, and their objectives for what they want to steal were also funny due to how lame they were. Included among the host of attackers was Billy Zane (Hellblazers, Ghosts of War) who was fun to see there, playing the role of an inept man with a ridiculous walrus style moustache.
Sunset Superman had some slightly dark edges to it but for the most part it was light hearted enough despite all the fighting. Jasper was a likeable lead and I enjoyed how bad at their jobs the antagonists were. I also liked how quickly this got to the core of the story, with the invading starting at around the twenty minute mark. This made for a fun and silly home invasion thriller that had a lot of heart to it. Sunset Superman had its premiere at Fantastic Fest and can be seen under its Don't Mess With Grandma moniker on Tubi.
SCORE:
No comments:
Post a Comment