When Super Humans Attack

Kick Ass Opens a Can of Whoop-Ass!
By
Morgan P Salvo


Kick-Ass is a goofy, mixed up movie that examines what would happen if regular people became super heroes. I don’t think this movie is sure what it is: teenage angst flick, revenge crime-stopper thriller, mob-boss-goons action flick, or sensitive slice-of-life indie slacker comedy. Oh, and tons of spurting blood combined with enough curse words to garnish an R-rating, plus an 11 year old heroine using the “c” word and chopping off as many limbs as a ninja assassin, accompanied by flying bullets to rival John Woo’s early work. Basically this movie has its moments, but it’s a mess.
Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a geeky high school student and comic book fan. His life is bland, he goes unnoticed by girls and he gets mugged by thugs in alleys. After pontificating that the world needs real super heroes to do the right thing even if they don’t have powers, he orders a super hero suit online and goes out to make the world a better place. Dave encounters his first battle and gets his ass kicked. This does not deter him from his quest however and he somewhat overpowers his next batch of thugs and is captured on video, spawning the legend of “Kick-Ass” and a huge internet craze. Meanwhile across town a father-and-daughter crime-fighting duo Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) are in training to fight a mob boss (a wildly funny Marc Strong), and soon both scenarios merge.
Drawing from Tarantino’s pop culture sensibility, director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) lays down the gritty and soft lens when needed, some insanely disconnected soundtrack music (theme from Banana Splits and Joan Jett) and strings together a bunch of intertwined events with a variety of excitement.. But the last act falls short deflating the novelty of a little girl slicing and dicing her way through mob henchmen.

Based on the comic Kick-Ass penned by Mark Millar and illustrated by John Romita Jr. while Image Comics co-founder Rob Liefeld describes this superhero interpretation as extolling "hyper-real super-violence". Kick-Ass is bloodier and funnier than one would think but it misses the mark more than hits any bull’s-eyes, skimming only the surface of Super Bad meets Ironman. Aside from some dazzling action sequences the best parts were the banter between the geeks dishing out sarcastic dialogue.
British actor Johnson brings real believable innocence to his confused alter-ego’s plight. Strong is still the best villain going these days and his tongue-in-cheek comic timing of a super serious bad-ass crime boss is hilarious, though he’ll get a lot of flack for punching a little girl…twice! Moretz is a great actress and steals the show but unfortunately she’s paired up with Cage’s stumble-bum acting style. Seemingly unaware of which direction to take, Cage plays goofy/wacky at first, than channels Adam West’s Batman for his super hero persona and then a stern yet sensitive ex-cop. These are not layers these are inconsistencies.
Kick Ass relies heavily on overused concepts, from having cartoons tell a back story to a Taxi Driver inspired “talking-to-the-mirror” scene. It also takes stabs at the power of the internet, skewering MySpace and YouTube and had a great twist about secret identities.

Combining family-movie sentimentality with grind-house debauchery Kick-Ass stays true to the comic book inspired idea that violence is here to shock and titillate, but then defeats its purpose by becoming way too formulaic: mob guys are dolts, real people are sensitive and there is no such thing as crime fighters, just crime killers. Like the teens obsessed with Kick-Ass comic books, we are supposed to share something in common with the film’s pop vigilantes, but all I shared was popcorn with my date.

Kick-Ass!
Starring Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Moretz, Mark Strong
Nicolas Cage, Michael Rispoli
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
 2 stars