”With no power, comes no responsibility.”
Comic book superheroes in a real world setting have been a hot topic for many recent action films. Iron Man and Christopher Nolan’s Bat-films have attempted to ground larger-than-life heroes in a more realistic setting. Watchmen took a heady approach in its depiction of the socio-political impact of costumed individuals while Hancock went a more comedic route. Now, Kick-Ass brings us a hero for today’s MySpace generation.
Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is your everyday, run-of-the-mill comic book fanboy. He’s geeky, gawky, and dutifully hits his local comic shop every week with the only two friends he’s got. Dave’s only superpower is the self-described ability to be invisible to girls, especially his long-time crush, Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca). One day, Dave orders a green scuba suit off eBay and fashions himself a pair of batons in order to fight crime as a masked vigilante. Thus, Kick-Ass is born, not out of a childhood trauma or intricate revenge fantasy, but merely out of an idle musing.
As Kick-Ass, Dave’s first foray into crime fighting leads to him being stabbed and struck by a car. Unperturbed, dons the outfit once more to defend the victim of a gang beating. This time around, eyewitnesses record the fight via camera phones and upload the footage to YouTube. Suddenly, Kick-Ass is a viral sensation inspiring others to follow suit, no pun intended. Chief among them is former cop Damon Macready and his pig-tailed daughter Mindy who become the dynamic duo of Big Daddy and Hit-Girl. Together, they wage a brutal war against mob boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong). With a pair of caped crusaders taking apart his drug operation, D’Amico turns to his nebbish son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who becomes the Red Mist in order to lure the other heroes out into the open.
Kick-Ass was based on a creator-owned mini-series published by Marvel, written by Mark Millar (who also wrote Wanted) with art by John Romita Jr. Anyone familiar with Millar’s work will recognize his fingerprints all over the property, which was originally pitched as Spider-Man meets Superbad. Employing shock and awe tactics in his writing techniques, Kick-Ass is profane and unrepentantly violent. So much so that director Matthew Vaughn financed the picture independently after being turned down by every major studio. After raising the $30 million budget himself, footage was screened at Comic-Con to an overwhelmingly positive response and the film was picked up for distribution by Lionsgate.
At the center of the controversy is the character of Hit-Girl, played by a then 11-year old Chloe Moretz. She’s a scene-stealer with a confident presence rare in such a young actress. Plenty of comparisons to Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver have been made. She’s a pint-size, death dealing dynamo. She’s Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, but small enough to fit in your pocket. The fact that someone so one is inflicting violence and having violence inflicted upon her has gotten many in an uproar. Roger Ebert has labeled the film as “morally reprehensible” for its depiction of Hit-Girl. It may churn some stomachs, but it’s hard for me to take any of it seriously when she’s hacking and slashing baddies to the theme song from The Banana Splits Adventure Hour.
Hit-Girl is a logical extension of the slightly creepy comic book tradition of the kid sidekick. DC Comics introduced the first kid sidekick in 1940 as a way to include a character for children to identify with. Never made sense to me, why would anyone want to be Robin when they could be Batman? In any event, Robin was a huge hit and pretty soon nearly every superhero leapt into action with a pre-pubescent costumed cohort with names like Sandy the Golden Boy and Stuff the Chinatown Kid. Kick-Ass brings the idea of reckless child endangerment into the 21st century with a young girl raised completely on comics, violent video games, and John Woo movies. The point is hammered home during one of Hit-Girl’s flurries as the film switches to the POV of a first-person shooter.
Most of the actors understand the over-the-top tone of the film and play it so, especially Nicolas Cage and Mark Strong. The always idiosyncratic Cage brings his own flourishes to the character. In his civilian guise, he’s Damon MacCready, an ex-cop bent on revenge. Rather than playing him as Dirty Harry, Cage gives him a Ward Cleaver quality with a Revenge of the Nerds-like laugh and a penchant for referring to his daughter as “child” and “baby doll.” As Big Daddy, he speaks with a deliberate, uneven staccato in a clear-cut homage to Adam West. The go-to-guy for villains, Mark Strong is excellent once again as the bad guy. He’s everything you expect from a mob boss.
The action sequences are handled well. Vaughn doesn’t rely on the usual quick cuts and tight close-ups that only manage to obscure the on-screen action. Vaughn had previously been attached to direct X-Men: The Last Stand and Thor, but finally gets to cut loose on a comic book movie with Kick-Ass. Vaughn formerly worked as Guy Ritchie’s producer on Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch before making his directorial debut on Layer Cake (after Ritchie declined). He’s become a far more versatile director than Ritchie.
The main weakness of Kick-Ass lies in the love story between Dave and Katie. Under the false assumption that he is gay, Dave becomes Katie’s BFF and the pair engage in ludicrous activities like rubbing tanning lotion on each other while nearly nude. The end result is equally unbelievable and departs from the source material. A light spoiler for the comic, but the hero does not get the girl.
Kick-Ass subverts the trappings of the superhero genre then revels in them becoming pure nerd wish fulfillment in the end.
Rating: *** ½
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