Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Yes, KICK-ASS truly lives up to its name. In what is easily Matthew Vaughn’s best work to date as well as one of the top 5 comic book movies of all time, KICK-ASS sets out to deconstruct standard comic book conventions and conceits in a hilarious manner while also delivering one hell of a fun action ride that lives up to everything you expect from those very same conventions and conceits. It is a brilliantly original concept that seems so simple and easy you wonder why no one has ever pulled it off before. But here it is, in all its glory, delivering ass beating after ass beating in a glorious brutality that comes with everything Matthew Vaughn does best.
The most admirable thing about KICK-ASS is that it is entirely Vaughn’s baby. He approached comic writer Mark Millar, negotiated the rights for his independently produced comic and raised the money himself. Made on an incredibly small budget for a comic book movie, it is a film that can afford the R rating it has and uses it to its fullest extent without ever slipping into crass exploitation. Bloody, brazen and wrong on so many levels, it is a film that will resonate immediately with fans, and one that never feels like it was the product of any kind of meddling. Loaded with wonderful, interesting characters, the film hits all of the requisite emotional beats while also proving to be every bit as bloody and raw as a film like this should be.
Focusing upon Dave Lizewski - your typical, run of the mill, everyday invisible geek – we see the roots of an origin story take place. Set in a world without superpowers but very aware of comic books, this young kid wonders aloud why no one has ever donned a cape and cowl and set out to fight injustice. So he does. And proceeds to learn why no one else has. Meanwhile, a crime fighting father/daughter duo are making mincemeat out of the local mob scene, and our hero – under the pseudonym Kick-Ass – gets caught up in the mess and finds himself in WAY over his head.
What works best is that while Vaughn definitely slips into a cinematic, John Woo-like pseudo-reality while playing around with some fairly ridiculous elements, he keeps it grounded enough in reality to allow us to buy it as a legitimate story. This isn’t SHOOT ‘EM UP which satirizes its subject and takes it completely over the top to cartoonish levels. It gets a lot of its power and humor from the fact that these characters need to deal with very real problems. Like being a teenage boy or a prepubescent girl.
Most appealing about this film however (on a number of levels, unfortunately) is the wildly iconic character HIT-GIRL. Not your typical run of the mill 9 to 11 yr old (the film is never quite clear) Hit-Girl is the daughter of a cop turned vigilante Big Daddy. Trained in all form of close combat, marksmanship and knife throwing, Hit-Girl is fun, hilarious and seriously bad ass. Her outfit is a playful mix of comic book hero and school girl, making for a very feminine ass kicker. But it also makes for a marginally fetishized underage heroine in the same vein as Natalie Portman in THE PROFESSIONAL; possibly inspiring more than a few costumes and a handful of loathsome age-countdown counters. I have a feeling this is going to be a very popular character that makes both a positive and a negative impact on the geek scene. Which is to say that Vaughn and Millar’s sin was making her a little too awesome. Not exactly the worst complaint you can make, but more than any other element will draw fire from conservative audiences and social critics – as we’re already seeing in part as a reaction to the trailers.
The film is relatively flawless. We saw a mostly finished film with temp music that still included a number of musical cues from the Warner Brothers catalog – including a number of cues from THE DARK KNIGHT – so I’m very curious to see how the final score plays with the film. The rest of the film was made of an iPod’s worth of pop music and a goodly chunk of The Prodigy’s latest album, INVADERS MUST DIE. Vaughn uses the music perfectly to punctuate whatever action he has going on and that moment is an incredible ramp up to some serious ass kicking. At one moment, the audience burst into clapping along with Guns & Roses NOVEMBER RAIN – a once in a lifetime event to be sure; I mean come on, that’s not going to happen again in an ordinary theater – but it does serve to highlight the level of energy in the moment. There’s little doubt that left in there it will create what might be the movie’s iconic, ass beating sequence.
More than anything this film is fun. It is a hilarious, action packed good time that just might become a modern classic in its own right. Bloody, wicked and intense, KICK-ASS is an experience I cannot wait to repeat. This comes HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and has a good chance of making a reappearance on my end of the year very best of 2010 list. See this at your earliest opportunity.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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