With No Power Comes No Responsibility (Kick-Ass Review)

Kick-Ass' premise is deceptively simple: why is it that no one in the real world dresses up like a superhero and fights crime?  This is the question that Dave, your average high-school boy, asks at the movie's onset.  It's a fair question: haven't you ever thought of buying/making your own costume and then going out and taking on criminals?  I know I have.  This is precisely what Dave does, though it doesn't exactly turn out as he thought.  Before long, Dave - or "Kick-Ass" - gets swept up in a much bigger plot involving crime lords and a lot of blood.

I was hooked on this movie from the moment I saw the first trailer, and I'm happy to say that I wasn't disappointed.  There's really nothing special about Dave, as he himself clearly points out, aside from the superpower of being "invisible to girls".  He's just your average high-school guy who, I'll be honest, reminded me a little too much of myself at that tender young age.  When he finally dons his wetsuit - excuse me, costume - he admits that really all it took was some optimism and naivete.  His actions over the course of this movie speak volumes: he has no "defining moment" of superhero origin, where his parents are murdered by criminals and he sets out to avenge them, no girlfriend raped and murdered by thugs in some dark alley, nothing.  And with no powers to encourage him, there really is no reason for him to become Kick-Ass.  Yet he does.  He goes out and risks his life for people he's never met just because it's the right thing to do and he's willing to take a stand.  He was a fantastic character, and well-played, too.  The only other thing I'd ever seen Aaron Johnson in was Shanghai Knights, where he played Charlie Chaplin as a boy, but that hardly counts, as he was 13 and it was a minor role (and not a terribly good movie, though it kills me to say that).  I hope to see him in more.

As the above poster may suggest, there are other "superheros" involved in the world of Kick-Ass, and it is with them that things get really interesting.  The first time you see Hit Girl and Big Daddy, the latter - Hit Girl's father - is all smiles and encouragement as he pulls a pistol from his belt and shoots his 11-year-old daughter in the chest, blowing a hole in her pink down coat and sending a few feathers into the air for amusing effect.  Don't worry - she's wearing a bulletproof vest, and her considerate father was merely showing her what it felt like to get shot in order to prepare her for the real thing. 

Nic Cage's performance as Big Daddy was far more endearing than I expected it to be.  He always calls Mindy - aka Hit Girl - "Child" with an odd southern accent, and he wears this big dopey grin to match his innocent eyes and his "I clearly used to be a cop" mustache.  But when he wears his Batman-like costume, he speaks to everyone but Mindy like Adam West's campy version of Batman from the 1960's.  Hearing Nic Cage impersonate Adam West alone made the movie worth watching.  Ironically, if you, you know, remove the weaponry and death from the equation, Big Daddy's interactions with his daughter are the perfect example of a great dad.  You can tell that they love and trust each other deeply.  Big Daddy does everything he can to teach and protect Hit Girl, while the latter struggles to learn what it means to do things on her own, outside of the training room.  They listen to each other, and they do the best that they can to bring out the most in each other.  It was touching, really, until the next scene finds Hit Girl running men through with a double-bladed glaive.

Hit Girl, meanwhile, was expertly played, given that the actress turned 13 this year.  From her character comes the majority of the critisism for the movie, though I think that some people can't live without getting in a fuss over something.  She's an adorable 11-year-old girl who enjoys wearing pink... and slicing people to ribbons with sharp, pointy objects.  The first time you see her in her superhero costume, she calls the merry band of druggies in the room "cunts", from which spawned a whole host of controversy that I just don't feel makes much sense.  The actress has stated in interviews that she would NEVER say those kinds of things outside of the set, to the point where she won't even say the name of the movie in public but just refers to it as "the film" or "Kick-Butt".  So if she's not psychologically disturbed by playing such a character, whom are the critics trying to protect by attacking her character?  Their kids?  If these people are taking their kids to go see Kick-Ass, then a few colorful remarks by a young actress are bound to be the least of their problems.  That leaves, then, the adult audience, who hears the same language - and more! - from almost every other character in the movie, but are these groups concerned about adult men saying such terrible things?  Who knows.  I doubt very much that they do.  I'm surprised that no one's accused these critics of being sexist.  That'd be funny: throw critics at those critics and see what happens.  I bet they'd start reenacting scenes from Kick-Ass.

Ever since we saw Star Trek last year (and found it to be fantastic), I've been conscious of an observation by my then-fiancee:sStrong female characters, and the curious lack thereof.  In Star Trek, Uhura and Spock's mom were pretty much the only women present for more than five seconds, and while both of them brought a lot to the film, in the end it was all about Kirk and Spock.  This is all too common in action/superhero flicks, with notable exceptions like Kill Bill and perhaps even The Fantastic Four.  Women are usually just there for romance, but seeing as how Hit Girl is only 11, that element gets taken clean out, leaving only a strong-willed girl with more depth than you may initially think.  This is a good thing, since the romance of the movie was not particularly exciting or, I thought, well drawn-out.  I'm not saying Kick-Ass' love interest wasn't a good character, or their interactions poor, but after a certain scene, she becomes pretty useless, while Hit Girl takes the spotlight more and more.

Mark Strong, meanwhile, has found a niche in playing rough, dark badguys with a certain flair of humor.  You may have seen him before as Septimus in Stardust, or the evil Lord Blackwood in the recent Sherlock Holmes.  And Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin from Superbad) plays his usual, dorky-type character, though of course he does it well.  That role was all but made for him.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  This is a movie made for anyone who loved Kill Bill.  It's the kind where you find yourself laughing because you've just realized that you're watching an 11-year-old girl in a school uniform and purple wig slicing off the leg of a huge hoodlum.  More than most superhero movies I've seen in quite a while, you feel as though the people behind the masks really are people, with their own personal struggles to face outside of the plot's central badguy.  But if you don't want to see what a man looks like when placed in a massive microwave (a combination of Nickelodeon's "Inside-Out Boy" and an overturned bowl of pasta sauce, as it turns out), then you may want to skip this one.  The blood and gore is as over-the-top as it was in Kill Bill, so take that how you will.  I, meanwhile, will be heading down to the local comics store to check out the original source for this movie.