Kick Ass

Ever wanted to be a superhero?
“You just have to be over optimistic and incredibly naive”

*** click the image for a surprise! ***

Swift shot:  Haven’t had this much fun with my pants on or sober in years!  This movie was the exact opposite of Crazy Heart – if you know anything about me, you know how much I HATED that diarrhea for the mind.  So, Rick, I guess that would make Kick Ass like some kind of anal plug for the mind?  I don’t know, I don’t care – the film was just a blast.  I would recommend it to anyone looking for a break from the typical Hollyweird comic caper rolling out these days.  Even the soundtrack made me wet myself a few times; I clapped like a kid who got the Millenium Falcon for Christmas – yea, it was that good!!!

What can I say about a film that not only doesn’t get all pompous with itself, but manages to be brutally emotional and real while at the same time coming off as hokey.  Since the hokiness was designed, it doesn’t seem to offend your delicate foo foo senses.  At one point Kick Ass manages a dramatic aside and asks would-be critics, “What, like you haven’t seen American Beauty?”  I love those little smacks to the would-be uber-critics who can’t help but shit on something because it doesn’t fit into a nice little homogenized package like Crazy Heart – which again, SUCKED!  (New York Times, I am zeroing in on you from here on out!)

Shit gets real pretty quickly in Kick Ass, set in the “real world” of New York, USA – the film answers a question I asked my dad when I was a kid – ‘Dad, why aren’t there any superheroes in real life?’  ‘Well, son of mine, because then you would have super villains.’  But creator Mark Millar shoves a big balisong knife into that theory – there already are super villains.  It is about time the old adage of evil can only exist if good men do nothing coming to fruition.  Of course in Kick Ass the term “good” is a little subjective.  Still, the Marine in me didn’t lose any sleep watching some of the lessor goons hacked to shredded wheat.  Fuck ’em!

I read a few of the comics, I got as far as when Big Daddy was introduced and stopped reading – mostly because I wanted to see the film first, not the other way around.  In this case, the film serves as a nice companion piece to the Kick Ass phenomena that took the comic book world by force.

What makes this film not suck like Crazy Heart?

Well, in short, the lifting of the veil of Hollywood bullshit – American plastic coated crap we feed our kids about good always triumphing over evil and bad guys coming with theme music.  Sometimes the most vile enemies come out of nowhere – sometimes they come out of ourselves.   Essentially, much like Indiana Jones, and John McClane (you better know who that is), characters in Kick Ass FEEL everything, and at times the audience feels the harshness of the “real world” too.

In Kick Ass, the bad guys are vicious and real – they aren’t playing games.  If you have shit they want, they take it, period.  If you get in the way, you are going to pay, period.  But, Kick Ass isn’t alone in his quest for right and justice, kinda.  While he wanted to be a superhero to save people, his companions in justice deal out their “good deeds” through vengeance soaked blades and bullets.  But, when justice is simply about vengeance, sacrifice is usually the order of the day.  Director Matthew Vaughn delivers this message quite effectively!

The characters might not have felt completely “real-life” enough, but they were believable when it counted.  Dave, Kick Ass, Leziwski (Aaron Johnson) is a geek through and through, a non-entity at school, not even the funniest one of his friends – he kinda just exists.  He plays that part well as Dave, and when he finally decides to shell out a hundred bucks on a scuba suit and become Kick Ass, as he explains it, like most serial killers will tell you, you can only survive on fantasy for so long . . . eventually you have to get real.

And, real it gets, due to his first encounter being a “superhero”, he winds up learning a valuable lesson, crime pays and heroics get you fucked up – still, his next adventure is a more realistic goal –  to find a lost cat.  Destiny has decided his little superhero stunt should lead to bigger, badder things; however, and he grows as a character and as a hero throughout the film.  His one-dimension tone quickly erodes as he is challenged in every conceivable fashion.

Next on the line-up of do-gooders is Big Daddy (Cage) and his daughter, Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz).  Big Daddy is driven by vengeance for the destruction of his life at the hands of the brutal crime-lord Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong), going so far as to turn that vengeance into a made-up fantasy world for his young daughter – this didn’t buy him parent of the year points in my book, and it’s why I say he was “good” only in the sense that he is trying to rid the world of slime.  Still, let your kid be a kid, man.

Cage plays three characters in this film, Big Daddy, Damon Macready, and  some kind of fantasy-based visage of a comic-book dad so his daughter can more readily accept her persona as his tool for vengeance.  Yes, some critics harped on Cage’s homage to Adam West while carrying out the Big Daddy scenes, but, really, I thought it was no less distracting when Bale scratched and hacked with his voice to sound all gruff and scary (even when he was alone with Morgan Freeman – yea, that bugged the shit out of me).  But remember, uber-critics, Big Daddy was a role for the benefit of his young daughter; it gave her little mind an air of make-believe in a harsh universe.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse plays the newest member of the team, Red Mist, who has all the most expensive toys and a sharp mind, but is his heart really in the game?  Mintz-Plasse (what kind of dude hyphenates his name anyway?) takes a bold chance with this film, he aint exactly McLovin’ but that is all I am gonna say about that.  Well acted considering he was really coming out of his comfort zone of geek-based tomfoolery comedies like Superbad.

This film will not be for everyone.  I heard some dumbass where I work in “real life” let their five year old watch this film!  Talk about poor parenting choices, even Big Daddy might have some words with those dolts.  The theme is set-up as light-hearted and fun in the previews, but while it was fun to watch, it is a dark movie – be forewarned.  People seeking some kind of serious script because it is “real life” need to realize that sometimes even real life can have moments of pure insanity.  The only moments of suspension of disbelief for me was how well Big Daddy and Hit Girl seemed to live in almost a vacuum and believing a little girl could be so damned lethal and efficient wielding so many weapons – still, the film tried to explain that too – but, man, she was the REAL KICK ASS!

I wonder if this film will actually inspire others to don masks and leather to fight crime?  I am all for it, because there is super evil in the world, dad, why can’t we see some super good?  Now, how many people want to kick some ass!?!?