Review: Kick-Ass
There are superhero movies and there are anti-hero movies and rarely do the two mix so well as in Matthew Vaughn's aptly named adaptation of Kick-Ass, the comic book series by Mark Millar, and the ultimate homage to hero movies.
Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is an ordinary high school student who just wants to get the girl, and oh yeah, fit in. He even goes so far as to try to make friends with Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), son of a reputed crime boss. Dave's obsession with superheroes inadvertently turns him into a YouTube superstar as the vigilante "Kick-Ass." When Kick-Ass lets it go to his head, he ends up encountering other masked heroes and things get pear-shaped.
With a rock-and-roll sensibility frequent in comic books, Kick-Ass deconstructs superhero mythologies, particularly their genesis but with an exceptionally ordinary teen who gets no superpowers, but still goes through an heroic odyssey. Dave tries on costumes and moves and has less than stellar results when he first takes on the bad guys.
A superhero story may seem like a departure from Vaughn's previous film, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's fantasy Stardust. However, Vaughtn's feature debut Layer Cake, an adaptation about a drug dealer's really bad week at work, has a similar darkly humorous edge with all too real consequences for fighting the paradigm.
Like most films, a good script helps but cast is everything, and Vaughn landed an outstanding cast. Aaron Johnson is a strong blend of geek-cute, making it easy to believe his Dave would don a suit and try to make the world a better place while occasionally looking like an actual superhero. Scene stealer Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin from Superbad) manages to keep his complex role from falling into cliche, and Clark Duke (Hot Tub Time Machine) has mastered sardonic geek best friend.
Vaughn apparently can't resist casting the same people in his films, including Dexter Fletcher, Jason Flemyng and Mark Strong; thankfully, they're all three strong actors. While I'd like to see Strong break away from the heavies he's always playing in films, anyone who's seen his work knows he can play a kingpin in his sleep and is always worth the ticket price to watch.
Strong isn't the scene stealer, though. Those honors go to the father and daughter team out for vengeance and giving Kick-Ass a run for his money. Bad Lieutentant: Port of Call New Orleans fans will flip over Nicholas Cage's performance as the ex-cop teaching his daughter to be a crime fighter. Cage is best when he gets to chew the scenery, especially with the young Chloe Moretz as his precocious daughter, who easily stands up to Cage's intensity despite her years.
Moretz is not a newcomer to film, with extensive credits to her name and in her second film of 2010. She's already proven she's mastered the mature-beyond-her-years tween in (500) Days of Summer. In Kick-Ass she's a pint-sized, sewer-mouth, martial-arts moppet. Like her film father, Moretz embraces her role enthusiastically, but she adds a few moments of girlish insecurity to prove she's capable of subtlety in her performance.
Controversy is likely to surround Hit-Girl, not for being a pint-sized assassin but for the profanity flowing past her lips that will make the jaded blush. Fortunately, the filmmakers intentionally made this an R-rated film to sidestep concerns about exposing youngsters (other than Moretz) to the ultraviolent world in which Hit-Girl lives.
The Kick-Ass theatrical version is slightly different from the unfinished version that wowed the crowds at Butt-numb-a-thon in December. Some of the songs are gone, such as the Batman and Superman themes, but the replacement music doesn't distract from the film. Judging by the record-breaking number of turned-away badgeholders at SXSW 2010 opening night, Kick-Ass is still a crowd pleaser, and controversies and changes aside, it's a refreshing early start to summer blockbusters.