Kick Ass was pretty great. Violent. Vulgar. Funny. Nicolas Cage with a moustache. It's the story of a teenager who decides to become a super hero. Donning a scuba suit he takes to the streets to fight crime and gets the snot knocked out of him. But he is optimistic and persists. Along the way he meets other, more organized heroes, gets famous on Myspace, and pisses off some bad dudes.
What is garnering the most attention is the character of Hit Girl. Apparently some people get upset when a foul mouthed eleven year old girl kills a room full of drug dealers. I say, that's what America is all about! The scenes with her and her father, Big Daddy, are great. it's oddly touching watching her make a deal that if she takes two more bullets to her protective vest, without wincing, they'll get sundaes.
And Nicolas Cage delivers another oddball performance. When not fighting crime he has a pleasant, Flanders-y demeanor. But once he dons a costume and adds extensions to his mustache, he murders gangsters and talks like Adam West.
The movie tries to take a "realistic" approach to superhero style vigilante justice but still keeps it within the world of comic books and superhero movies. Our hero gets injured constantly and has more guts and good heart than skills or plans. It's a world where instead of kids trying what they see on TV, they try what they see at the comic shop.
Kick Ass earns its R rating with brutal violence and harsh language but still maintains elements of comedy. It isn't an oppressively dark, violent movie. Imagine the first Spiderman movie written by somebody more horny and cynical. And in that movie Peter Parker meets an incredibly violent vigilante father/daughter duo.
When Kick Ass is blamed for a series of mobster murders, he becomes the target of some really bad guys, not just street thugs. Enter the villain's teenage son as the decoy superhero, Red Mist. I felt like they were trying to put Red Mist on a moral tightrope where we were supposed to wonder where his allegiances would eventually fall. However there was never too much doubt, especially by the end where his character's moral choices could have played out very interestingly. Instead I felt that the last few minutes were some of the weakest of the movie. Hit Girl's attack on the mob boss's lair was great. But then there was some jet pack business that stretched the movie's accepted realms of realism for me.
Kick Ass was a fun take on the Superhero genre and I'll definitely check out a sequel in the future.
Today's arbitrary rating says that Kick Ass gets 12 broken noses, 3 broken ribs, and 16 black eyes out of forty something somethings,
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