Kick-Ass
Pow! Move over heroes and say hello to Kick-Ass, the most action packed, tongue and cheek, “violentest” super hero flick to hit the block since, well ever. Based off of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s comic of the same name, Kick-Ass is a an over-the-top satire on the genre beloved by fan-boys over. As much a comedy as an action flick, you’d be hard pressed to find a more entertaining movie in theaters right now.
Relative newcomer but soon to be notable Aaron Johnson stars as awkward teen Dave Lizewski. Bullied by street punks and invisible to girls, Dave is pushed to the limit after being mugged and as a result decides to don the garb of the heroes he so much admires. Creating the persona of “Kick-Ass”, he quickly becomes the talk of the town, but Dave gets a little more than he bargained for when crossing paths with NYC crime lord Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong.) Additionally, D’Amico has already been targeted by a pair of crime-fighters named Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloë Moretz), though they’re really more of revenge seeking assassins than justice seeking do-gooders.
The result here is a stylish and exciting blend of tongue and cheek humor with uncensored, high adrenaline action. The characters couldn’t be more colorful and ridiculous, especially Nicolas Cage doing his best Adam West. Hit Girl is another character of note, played by firecracker Chloë Moretz. Lead Aaron Johnson is your typical underdog and Clark Duke gets a fair share of the laughs as Dave’s friend Marty. Everyone has their moments and there’s a great deal of character development.
Though it’s new to theaters this week Kick Ass has already stirred up it’s fair share of criticism and controversy, which I feel is worth addressing. One being the excessive violence, mostly from the character of Hit Girl. More or less the fact that she’s a hardened, killer that shows no remorse for her actions. Though I honestly don’t see how it’s any worse than The Bride in critical darling Kill Bill. Both are done for no more than the sake of being stylish and over-the-top. I think folks are just uncomfortable that these acts are being committed by a child. That also leads to the controversy of Hit Girl’s raunchy language, but all I can say to that is if your looking for any kind of morals in a movie called Kick-Ass, you’re going into the wrong movie with the wrong mindset. It’s clearly a movie that was made to be funny and entertaining.
Does it have it’s flaws? Probably, but I was so distracted by the humor and video game like madness that I honestly didn’t even think about it. This is no tour de force of filmmaking, it’s simply unadulterated, dark humor and all out fun. The kind of movie you might walk out of saying “That was sick! Remember that one part where they said that thing and murdered that guy? That was balls to the walls!”