A wickedly cool journey that makes you want to trade in your day job, don a silly suit for a life of back-flips, knuckle dusters and outrageous monickers.
Superheroes are cool. Whether you’re a cape-wearing, five-year-old boy saving the world from the squirrels in your garden, or an adult geek secretly wishing you could zip through the streets on high-tensile webbing; superheroes are just awesome. Yet, few people consider costumed crime-fighting to be a viable career choice. Kick Ass, shows it can be done.
Dave Lizewski (Johnson) is an awkward, high-school geek who decides that its his civic duty to help his fellow man – by becoming a superhero. Emulating the characters in his comic-books he adopts a secret identity and sets about fighting crime – obviously without the superpowers of his heroes. After an initial rocky start, his alter-ego Kick Ass becomes the local hero, embroiled in real-life adventures. His deeds soon attracts the attention of, not only his schoolboy crush Katie, but the dangerous crime lord Frank D’Amico (Strong) who mistakenly believes that Kick Ass is responsible for an attack on his business. Not so.
In amongst the outbreak of copycat heroes that Kick Ass has sparked, is experienced costumed vigilantes Big Daddy (Cage) and Hit Girl (Moretz), a deadly father and daughter duo who are the real perpetrators of the attack. This is when the action goes into high throttle.
While Aaron Johnson acts as the much-needed anchor, it is Cage and Moretz who dominate the screen. The sweet parent-child relationship they share whilst talking candidly about dangerous weaponry and killing thugs shocks as much as it amuses. While Cage has great fun channelling Adam West’s 60s Batman when in costume, Moretz is the breakout star as Hit Girl spouting highly offensive language as she stabs, shoots and de-limbs the criminal element that dares to come in her path.
No doubt the precocious, potty-mouthed super-she will bring about much angry debate but the fifteen year old audience and above, as BBFC recommended, has probably seen it all anyway, albeit not usually from the mouth of babes. No apologies are made for the inappropriate portrayal of this young girl but then the film thrives on being irresponsible, knowing that it is not held by the same restraints as other family-friendly superhero movies.
The film is highly original in that it does not create a world like ours, it literally sets it up in ours. Or rather, it co-exists both inside and outside this fictional world of superheroism. And successfully so. It starts as the antithesis of comic-book fantasy, poking fun at the more mundane elements of being a superhero (finding crime to stop for one) and the naïvety with which Dave approaches his new identity. Yet when Big Daddy and Hit Girl hit the scene, the story plunges straight into the realm it ridicules, with hyper-realistic fight scenes, cool gadgets and snappy acrobatics.
The end result is a movie that is overtly cool and as flashy as it is controversial. An uncompromising, unapologetic ride, it works on every level. Lacking in superpowers it may be, but Kick Ass may just be one of the best comic-book films ever made.
