Every so often, Kick-Ass (the Matthew Vaughn–directed adaptation of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s real-world-superhero comic book) sparkles with a fanboy wit that threatens to poke holes in the entire ridiculous idea of superhero movies. Aaron Johnson’s Dave Lizewski is your standard funnybook nerd (of the skinny-kid-with-an-Afrolike-haircut variety, not the overweight-kid-with-overly-stylish-glasses version), who gets the idea to put on a costume and fight crime as a hero named Kick-Ass, less because he wants to do right in the world and more because he thinks it would be supremely cool. And there’s not much more to the movie than that: Kick-Ass fights bad guys and teams up with other superheroes, and then they all battle their way up to a confrontation with the Big Bad Guy. It could be the plot of a video game from 1987.
In his gaudy green and yellow gimp-suit, Dave unintentionally shits all over the idea of superheroics. The first 20 minutes of Kick-Ass are a point-by-point repudiation of the nerd fantasy that is the first 20 minutes of Spider-Man—the costume-design scene, the leaping-across-a-huge-chasm-between-two-buildings scene, the first-confrontation-with-minor-thugs scene. And there are moments of genius sprinkled throughout the film. It transcends the comic it’s adapting by leaps and bounds, adding a cleverness that Millar couldn’t convey in print.
The best part of Kick-Ass isn’t the title character, though: It’s Hit-Girl, an 11-year-old martial-arts expert who plays the badass role usually reserved for a Charles Bronson or a Chuck Norris. Chloe Moretz’s Hit-Girl is a sharp, hilarious satire of action-movie badassery.
She snarls and struts with a confidence that puts Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to shame, and her potty-mouthed mayhem is maybe the last
shocking thing you’ll ever see in mainstream American movies; it combines the modern idea of children as angelic, fragile love letters from
heaven with our orgasmic glee at scenes of
gratuitous violence.
Almost as good as Moretz is Nicolas Cage, whose Batman-looking Big Daddy is the older version of Lizewski—he chortles beneath his sex-offender mustache when he’s out of the costume and does a shaky Adam West impersonation when he’s in it. Cage is in his operatic mode here, shooting for the cheap seats with broad comedy and sweeping pathos, and he finally scores his big superhero-movie win (Cage was signed for the lead role in an aborted Tim Burton–directed Superman movie more than a decade ago, and he starred in 2007’s aggressively mediocre Ghost Rider).
A dramatic gun battle unfolds under a strobe light, transforming the sequence into a slide show of static “panels” showing people frozen in midair, their faces grimacing in superheroic concentration. A couple of Warhol prints of blazing guns hang in the office of crime boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong, showing more bad-guy flair here than in Sherlock Holmes), reappropriating the ironic work back into the comic-book realm.
But for every one thing that works about Kick-Ass, there are two that feel poorly considered or weirdly rushed. A half-assed “animated” sequence depicting the origins of Big Daddy and Hit-Girl is supposed to pay homage to the movie’s comic-book roots, but it winds up looking like an unprofessional mess. A couple of early scenes open with caption boxes laid over the film, comic-book-like (“Meanwhile…”), but the gimmick disappears for no reason, as though director Vaughn simply forgot about it.
And then a scene involving Hit-Girl and a hallway full of armed assassins that could have become a brilliant take on a Steve Ditko action sequence instead is just a horrible mess of blender-edited action cuts. The irregular mix of ironic scenes and crazy-violent sequences that just look cool point to a bigger problem with Kick-Ass as a coherent work.
Millar, the author of Kick-Ass, consistently has troubles with tone. He tries to parody the over-the-top attitudes of modern comics while at the same time satisfying the hardcore nerds who want to read comics specifically because they’re over-the-top. In The Ultimates, he famously mocked George W. Bush’s foreign policy by making Captain America into a highly competent douche who shot first and asked questions after all the brown people were crippled. Not confident enough to leave him as a douche, though, Millar had to also make Captain America into a cool, catchphrase-shouting douche. Comics nerds loved him, and Millar loved that they loved him, so he cranked up the jingoistic idiocy to 11, forgetting about the parody in the process.
It’s like that here: Kick-Ass is about how superheroes are basically a dumb, dangerous idea with elements of creepy serial-killer behavior, but it’s also about how wearing costumes, blowing shit up, and kicking the asses of anonymous mob guys like in video games is totally fucking awesome. Those two ideas simply aren’t compatible. Kick-Ass is full of enough ineptly handled superhero-movie tropes to turn off an audience drawn by the real-life-superhero concept, and packed with enough clever winks to frustrate the shut-your-brain-off-and-watch-shit-go-boom crowd. 
I saw this piece of shit earlier this year and was bored after the first 20 minutes. This is a dumb movie that thinks it is smarter then every other superhero film. FAILURE!! BORING!!
I have a feeling this film will be on your mind for a long while.
Thank you for those last two paragraphs, Paul. Millar only ever wrote one, maybe two, good comics on his own–most of the time he’s all the way up his own ass and completely missing the mark.
meh. I’m a fan of this comic – so I’ll give it a serious day in court. But that 1st showing will dictate if this is a see once and move on – or something I’ll pick up on Blu-Ray to add to the collection.
While I dislike miller’s captain america character, you miss the point when you say that he’s badly written. He’s actually written very well, if as bit of an thck, well intentioned asshole.
Similiarly, you miss the point of this movie. Miller is making the point that, yes, super hero comics(and heroes) are stupid concepts. But he’s also making the point the he(and we) love them. It’s all in the last scence, where the granster cynically says ‘no one does that many pushups, kid’, and hit girl say ‘i do’.
The fact is that miller lives super heroes, just as Alan Moore did before him. But, like s lot of nerdfare, you need to be able to get it before you get it. Miller isn’t mad about superheroes: he’s just pissed of that most people, including the reviewer, just don’t get them, and try to reduce them to smirking soundbites.
The problem, of course, is that it’s not that simple: for a lot of us, superheroes are the modern logos and ethos. We like them, we look to their stories for hidden moral messages, and we get pissed off when they’re handled badly.
Think of it this way: miller is a purist. He seeks to explore the essence of things, and expose them, sans their normal form. That is why he wrote a superhero book about super heroes who aren’t super. I just wish more people got it.
This is a nice review, but I wonder if it’s too much informed by the comic. I haven’t read the comic, but the movie was far more in love with the idea of superheroes than the reviewer gives it credit for. It’s about how superheroes are dumb and dangerous, true. And it’s about how the shit is awesome, true. But it’s also about how superheroes may be dumb and dangerous in real life, but are also powerfully inspirational.
The scene were Kick Ass says he’d rather die than let 3 thugs gang up on a man than be a slack-jawed bystander is the true center of the movie. Behind the satire, the ridiculousness, the ultraviolence, there’s a beating heart that cares about and approves of its central character.
Apologies for the first sentence of my second paragraph. “…rather die than let 3 thugs gang up on a man while being a slack-jawed bystander…”
The whole point is that being a superhero IS dumb and what they do IS awesome.
Stop the hatin.
Can’t wait for the sequel – Kick-Ass II: Hit-Girl Hits Back.
Honestly, I took the film for what it was when I saw an ultra-early screening (which turned out to be the final cut): absurdist superhero film send-up as Paul alluded to. Go, shut off your brain, enjoy the gratuitous homages, laugh when your told, and just go with it. It’s not a higher-brain function film. It’s reptilian.
The scene of him beating up the guys outside the diner, right up to the “I’M KICK-ASS!!!!!” cell phone video bit was the best part of the entire film. That desperate nature of the fight I recall was just literally perfect and captured in a perfect nutshell what it would be to be a real-life superhero without powers or Bruce Wayne nonsense. That 120~ seconds is brilliant.
Also, Millar’s best work ever was Red Son. Hands-down one of the best Superman works ever done. That and Hitman #34 (for the ultra-geek out there–remember, the conversation between Superman and Tommy on the Gotham rooftop, about the space shuttle disaster?), which may just be the best single Superman story of all time. Ironic that a Scot and an Irishman both can nail Superman better than any American has yet.
Saw it last night and loved it loved it loved it.
I saw it last week at a screening. I enjoyed the hell out of it and so did the crowd. Forget Millar for a sec and focus on the director Matthew Vaughn. He has put together a great Tarantino-esque comic book action film.
Go see it. Have a blast cheering for Hit-Girl who pretty much steals the movie.
I thought it was horrible. Unless you think people getting graphically killed is hilarious, and enjoy watching every woman in the movie extremely degraded then I would not recommend watching it. If I was with anybody other than my best friend I would have got up and walked out, especially if I was with my brother, because how humiliating would it be to sit there and watch some guy jerk off to his teacher acting like she was out of a porn video. Watching an eleven year old sociopath murder people and the crowd laughing is not my idea of a good time.
Saw it yesterday and loved the hell out of it. This entire review boils down to a few sentences that I disagree with:
“Kick-Ass is about how superheroes are basically a dumb, dangerous idea with elements of creepy serial-killer behavior, but it’s also about how wearing costumes, blowing shit up, and kicking the asses of anonymous mob guys like in video games is totally fucking awesome. Those two ideas simply aren’t compatible.”
Those two ideas are perfectly compatible for anyone who is capable of any sort of complexity in their worldview, anyone whose existential milestones come in shades other than black and white.
@12: clearly you need to research your movie selections more thoroughly. And growing a backbone might help you walk out of movies that you consider “horrible.” I for one have never sat through a movie I though was “horrible.” Ever. Bitching about anti-feminist subtext in a movie when you lack the personal agency to fucking leave a situation that you hate is really sad.
at 1: obvious troll is obvious.
I really enjoyed this movie but felt like they were intentionally giving me emotional whiplash.
Jesus, lighten the fuck up people. It’s good, ultra-violent fun with a bit of realism and self-awareness thrown in for good measure. I would think someone who takes cinema seriously would applaud it for being more cerebral than the more simplistic super-hero movies out there and for taking chances most Hollywood films wouldn’t dare; c.f. violent and foul-mouthed little girls.
I loved this movie. It was laugh-out-loud bloodthirsty insanity. If you don’t agree than go suck it because today is my birthday. May the fourth be with you.
the movie is great. so fun. hit girl is incredible.
don’t listen to the whiny review or the negative comments from the sad dorks on here. none of them could create something as cool as this movie.
The fact that there’s so much talk about this movie just proves that it served one of its purposes… To create controversy.
Another purpose it fulfills well is in communicating the message that most people just watch how bad things happen and do nothing, and that happened when this particular guy decides to do something in his own way, and although it is all surreal, it wouldn’t surprise me if it inspired people to simply take action in helping our fellow man not necessarily dressing up and all that but each one of us in our own way, in our daily lives, our jobs, schools, at home, our family, friends, strangers… anyone.
And finally, the movie serves the purpose of all movies and the reason we see them… ENTERTAINMENT!!! so lighten up people, it’s JUST A MOVIE, and it’s a KICK ASS movie I must say!
Cheers!
I’m not particularly into superhero movies, but I thought this was great fun.