Released April 8, 2010
Even with more than half a dozen superhero projects in development (including the all star The Avengers movies), it’s easy to feel the genre reached its artistic peak with The Dark Knight. Instead of following the formula to a tee, this adaptation of Mark Millar’s latest creation deconstructs it by making its characters comic book readers. In other words, it is to the superhero genre as Scream was for horror movies. It’s as much as success too, funny and surprisingly sweet yet featuring an 11-year old girl snarling the C-word and indulging in some cartoonish ultra-violence. Cue the uproar from family watchdogs. For the rest of us heathens, Kick-Ass is a thrilling piece of visceral cinema with a gleeful disregard for political correctness.
Traditional elements are shredded in a pop-culture blender resulting in characters who are familiar yet unique. Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is your average masturbatory teenager who would rather be anywhere but English class. A green wetsuit and myspace page later and he’s become Kick-Ass, amateur superhero and star of the most watched YouTube video on the web, a bloody and messy beating of local thugs. He’s Spiderman by way of McLovin. Mindy Macready/Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz) is the scene stealing purple-haired assassin, a mash of Natalie Portman from Leon and The Bride from Kill Bill. Her father is Big Daddy, whom a wacky Nicolas Cage defines indelibly as his own by way of Adam West’s Batman. McLovin himself (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) also appears as the son of supervillain Mark Strong, who should be getting good at it after Holmes, Stardust and Sunshine.
Director Michael Vaughan (Layer Cake) gives each action scene a distinct character – one brutal and circular, one in a continuous take and, in one of the film’s many nods to the iPod generation, one in video game-esque first person. He understands a mash of cuts doesn’t work without continuity, and that the best action advances character. Solidifying the endorphin rush is the deliberate choice of music, largely pillaged from composer John Murphy’s previous work (28 Days Later, Sunshine).
The buoyant thrills are matched by a genuine heart that lies less with Lizewski and friends’ Superbad antics than it does the unconventional Hit Girl/Big Daddy relationship, which optimistically purports how love can flourish even amongst the most peculiar of circumstances.
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