Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn
Starring Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mark Strong, Chloe Moretz, Nicolas Cage
Rated R for strong violence, sexual content, and profanity
Rating - 3 bullet holes
Watching Kick-Ass is a miserable experience. The film is a morass of depraved morality, shitty acting, laughable dialogue (ridiculous lines like “I’m going to knock his lungs through his ass”), and bewildering ambitions. I have not read the source material comic nor do I want to. So, don’t even try to justify the film by saying that it is loyal to the source comic. A film should stand on its own.
Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a nerdy New York teenager obsessed with comic books and the heroes they produce. He begins to wonder why no one in real life has tried to become a superhero. His theory is that, like Bruce Wayne, you don’t even need special powers. Just a flashy suit and an enthusiasm for standing up to bad guys. So, he purchases a green and yellow wetsuit and adopts the name Kick-Ass becoming a media phenomenon. Along the way, he meets Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and her father Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) who have had much better luck at being superheros thanks to Big Daddy’s intense need for revenge against local crimeboss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong).
Before you accuse me (or any others who hate this film) of being a square or prude, please read my website. It’s pretty evident that I don’t shy away from violent films. There are some truly great ones that have been made. Kick-Ass is not one of them. Hit Girl is a deplorable character. She is an 11 year old girl who brutally and almost gleefully eviscerates her opponents. In fact, she kills some people that aren’t even armed and are guilty, I guess, by association. She also has a mouth that would make a union organizer blush. Hit Girl uses every profanity imaginable. And I mean every one. She uses words that you can go through other R-rated films without ever hearing. But even her profanity doesn’t ring as true. There is no cadence or frequency in her profanity to make you think it’s her normal speech. She seems to use every major curse word only once. It is simply a gimmick, and you get the sense that the screenwriter really gets off on the fact that a little girl is cursing and is showboating.
And this is the problem…if Kick-Ass were meant to be satire, it would make sense. But it’s, not. Satire, to me, is exaggeration with a purpose. The violence and profanity in Kick-Ass are definitely exaggerated. But to what end? They are certainly not satirizing anything because this is a film that is rejoicing in the genre…in love with it in the sense that a man might have a sick obsession with an underage neighborhood girl down the street. When bad guys were getting mowed down, the moviegoers I were with began laughing, applauding, and hooting like mentally deranged baboons attempting to entice a mate. That is not satire what your film elicits that kind of reaction.
Dave Lizewski is a likable enough character when we first meet him. After he meets Hit Girl, however, he begins to become more violent and quickly becomes a douchebag…to me anyway. He also gets involved in yet another ridiculous subplot when a girl he likes in school thinks he’s gay, so he has to go along with it to be closer to her. *yaaaaaawn* Another eye-rolling character is Christopher Mintz-Plasse as D’Amico’s son Chris. Chris wants to get into a life of crime like his father and because he is also a comic book geek, he adopts the persona of Red Mist to help his dad find out the whereabouts of Big Daddy and Hit Girl. The film sets up Red Mist to become the main villain of the inevitable sequel. Good luck with that. Mintz-Plasse is a terrible actor. He was enjoyable in Superbad and Role Models but is playing the same character here. We are supposed to just accept his capacity for evil when he is laughably awful at it (and not intentionally). McLovin as a villain. O…k.
Kick-Ass uses a troubling technique that I’ve noticed over the last few years - CGI blood. I am shocked at this direction the industry is going. Since when did using blood squibs become so expensive? You cannot convince me that a film’s budget cannot allow for them. Nothing ruins an action film for me quicker than seeing this. Now, if the CGI blood is done effectively to where you can’t tell, fine. But, I have yet to see a film accomplish this. In this age of computer graphics and 3-D, give us something that’s real. Use blood squibs or air compressors or something! Give us visual effects, not special effects for our blood!
One of the only things saving Kick-Ass from being rated a bomb is the opening two minutes (which you can see most of at the beginning of the trailer below). It is a twisted but truly funny opening. In fact, it’s one of the funniest openings you’ll ever see for a superhero film. Or possibly any movie. Then, there is another darkly comic sequence involving Big Daddy shooting Hit Girl to get her used to taking a bullet with a Kevlar vest on. The rest of the film is a truly disturbing experience. I considering walking out of it, but I was so shocked at how bad it was that I wanted to see where it was going. And where did it go? Straight into the toilet of bullshit cinema that tries to pass itself off as art and really pisses me off.
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