Kick-Ass Review

Long time no post! Watching lots of bad films ALL the time puts one off sitting down to review them. I'm not sure I could do this professionally. So it's with some pleasure that the first review in a long time is a good one.

Kick Ass really surprised me. I went in expecting to dislike it seeing as it's comprised of many elements I normally hate, glorified violence, "cool" "quotable" dialogue, comic book/graphic novel adaptation, the Matthew Vaughn element. Maybe low expectations helped but for whatever reason I thoroughly enjoyed Kick Ass.

The story concerns Dave Lizewski (Nowhere Boy's Aaron Johnson sporting a great American accent) a comic book loving loner whose only super power in his own words is his "invisibility to girls." Dave questions what it would be like to be a superhero for real and wonders why no one has done it before. He goes online, finds a bright green diving costume, and, armed with a pair of nunchucks, starts to fight crime. His first attempt is disastrous and he ends up beaten, stabbed and hit with a car. His injuries result in problems with his nerve endings which mean a higher threshold to pain. Which is just as well as he never really gets any better as a superhero throughout the whole film. The idea of the character of Kick Ass having his ass repeatedly kicked is one of many great running jokes in the film. On his second attempt he discovers that he isn't the only person with this idea. Damon Macready (a fantastic Nicolas Cage. Yes you read that right. A fantastic Nicolas Cage) an ex-cop with a personal vendetta against crime boss Frank D'Amico (current rent-a-villain Mark Strong) has turned himself into the Batman like Big Daddy and has trained his daughter Mindy to become Hit Girl. More on her later... Kick Ass, Big Daddy and Hit Girl join forces to fight crime in a whole manner of knife wielding, bone crunching, profanity laden sequences.

The thing you notice with Kick Ass is its pace. The story moves along, the action is varied and well spaced out, the humour is more or less consistent and coming in at under 2 hours (running time being my new most important criteria for how much I enjoy a film) the film (more or less) doesn't outstay its welcome. The writing (by director Vaughn and Jane Goldman) is smart and the performances are excellent. Johnson is terrific in the lead, unafraid to look the fool or take a beating and when he starts enjoying his youtube fame with his alter ego and lands the girl you feel genuinely happy for him. The film ends up being stolen by Cage who is fun and enjoyable for the first time in what feels like decades, his tics and mannerisms perfectly suited to the heightened world of the film. His vocal cadence as Big Daddy, trying to make himself sound more like a superhero (and clearly channeling Adam West in the process) is hilarious. The violence is very strong and will be viewed by many as reprehensible and immoral. I am no fan of violence for violence's sake but the film manages to be fun, entertaining and genuinely funny. I also think the film is cleverer than I thought it would be and is subversive in a way that really surprised me (and in a way that, for me, Watchmen, a film that covers similar ground, isn't) which is why I could stomach the violence.

Which brings us nicely onto Hit Girl... The first time we see twelve year old Mindy she is being shot at by her Dad who is teaching her what the impact of a bullet feels like and why it's nothing to be scared of. It's a brilliant scene, reminiscent of how a parent might teach their child that riding a bike is nothing to be scared of either. The first time we see her alter ego Hit Girl she skewers a villain with a blade that's about a foot longer than she is and says to the room full of henchmen the following line of dialogue.

"Okay you cunts. Let's see what you can do now"

Clearly you're on shaky ground here and I think many people's enjoyment of the film will depend on how they respond to that character. Personally, I think this comes back to the film's intentions and, while I'm not trying to pretend the film doesn't want you to laugh at this notion and also to find it very cool the way she dispatches bad guys in her many fights, shoots outs and other action scenes, I repeat my opinion that I think the film is cleverer than its surface might have you believe. You DO end up viewing her as an adult and this is brought to the surface in a great joke near the end when a teenager, watching Hit Girl's exploits on the internet comments on how hot she is and he friend replies, "Dude, she's like, 11." This idea of the near sexualisation of violence, the almost fetishisation (if that's a word...) of comic book characters and the violence they mete out is put into an interesting light by making the character a 12 year old girl. I think however that alot of people will be put off by the surface notion of what's happening which is fair enough too. I also think it's a question of tone and the fact that Hit Girl's first fight is put to the Banana Splits theme reveals the kind of world we're operating in.

On a more superficial note the action is superbly done. I can't imagine the film's budget was particularly high, certainly not by the standards of most comic book adaptations anyway, but it never feels cheap or skimped upon. Moreover, the action is varied so you're never bored and brilliantly choreographed and directed by Matthew Vaughn. I've said it before, but watch Transformers 2 for a film that has no clue how to depict its action scenes. Every fight and shoot out in Kick Ass is choreographed, shot and edited so I know exactly where I am at any given moment, making the action all the more thrilling and enjoyable for that.

Raging Bull it ain't then but for a fun, funny piece of entertainment you could do alot worse than see Kick Ass.

7.5/10