Film: "Kick-Ass"

Here I go, contradicting the description of the blog in my very first real post.
I was able to see a 10:00 P.M. screening of Kick-Ass tonight. I throughly enjoyed it.
For those who don't know the premise, the film follows an awkward high-schooler by the name of Dave (played by Aaron Johnson, who feels like a pleasing mix of Michael Cera and Jonah Hill). Dave is the kid in school who nobody notices. He's a comic-book geek and is bad with girls. Getting mugged is a common occurrence in his neighborhood, but Dave hates the fact that others can watch as scum like the men shaking him down break into cars and steal peoples cash at knife-point. So Dave attempts to become a comic-book superhero. His antics in a street fight garner him Internet fame, as he adopts the name of Kick Ass and promises to continue fighting crime. Along the way, he meets the purple-wigged Hit Girl and the gun-toting Big Daddy. These two true heroes are trying to take down Frank D'Amico's crime ring, and Dave gets caught in the middle of the conflict.

Now, the trailers are extremely misleading for Kick Ass. It appears to be Superbad with superheroes, when it's actually a graphic novel adaption, with emphasis on the word graphic. Just like a comic book, the colors in the film are varied and exciting, and they draw attention to and highlight the action in the film. Blood is a vivid red, grenades are bright yellow, and Daves costume itself is a teal green with yellow highlights. The characters are colorful too. Big Daddy, portrayed by Nicholas Cage, delivers his in-costume lines with a peculiar rhythm of pauses and quick bursts of words, which I found very amusing. Hit Girl is cocky and profane, all while being eleven years old. The superhero side of the movie leads naturally to the gore and bloodshed contained within the film.

It's the combination of the superhero elements with the real world that makes parts of the film feel overly graphic or immoral. As the movie shows Dave in his life outside of the costume, we get a very realistic portrayal of teenage life. Dave's conversations with his buddies Todd and Marty feel genuine, and Clark Duke's delivery is the main reason for that. Dave's interaction with the beautiful Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca) attribute to his motivation for becoming Kick Ass: his need to be noticed.

Big Daddy and Hit Girl also have their motives spelled out, but Chloe Moretz's Hit Girl isn't as expressive of her loss, and there is where the moral conundrum lies. In a particularly graphic scene taking place in the apartment of one of Frank's dealers, Kick Ass is saved by the blade-wielding Hit Girl. After taking out goons threatening her with butterfly knives and more, she continues to kill the girl who was with them and the addict in the corner, who tries to protect himself with a lamp. The characters of Hit Girl and Big Daddy are so willing (and able) to kill, that they do so without remorse. In most scenes, I was too busy watching the excellently choreographed action to worry about the choices the characters were making, but in the scene above I got pretty caught up. These gray areas of morality lead to Hit Girl and Big Daddy being harder to sympathize with. By the end, you might agree with what those characters are doing, but the awkward middle drags the movie down just a bit.

Still, Dave's character saves the film by being the only clear good guy. His motivation as a hormone-crazy teenager under a single parent make his story easily understood. So when Kick Ass jumps into the action, you're sure as hell rooting for him. And that's not to say you won't cheer for Big Daddy or Hit Girl, either. But if you're like me, you might question doing so for a good portion of the film. But by the time the climax comes around, the film returns from the real world and becomes more of a comic book, with everything in absolutes. The final two action scenes are so crazily awesome, with definite good guys and bad guys, that you'll be on the edge of your seat as the heroes attempt to take on the crime syndicate in a bloody rampage.

Beside the moral gray areas the film expects us to relate to, the other glaring problem to me was Christopher Mintz-Plasse's Red Mist/Chris D'Amico. As the son of Frank, Chris wants to become a crime boss like his father. While we're given his motivation, we're never shown it very well. I found Mintz-Plasse unconvincing throughout the whole film.

But these are relatively small problems compared to the enjoyment that the target audience of Kick Ass will get from the visceral action sequences and uneasy but hilarious teenage humor. When you view the movie as you would its source material, as a comic book, the viewer gets a film with breathtaking action and memorable jokes led with a message to take life into your own hands and to never give in to the world and its pressures.

9/10