Kick-Ass «½
R, 117m. 2010
Cast & Credits: Aaron Johnson (Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Chris D’Amico/Red Mist), Mark Strong (Frank D’Amico), Chloe Grace Moretz (Mindy Macready/Hit Girl), Nicolas Cage (Damon Macready/Big Daddy), Omari Hardwick (Sergeant Marcus Williams), Xander Berkeley (Detective Gigante). Screenplay by Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman based on source material from the comic book: Kick-Ass by Mark Millar and John S. Romita. Directed by Matthew Vaughn.
There is a scene from "The Losers", out in theaters April 23, I caught a few days ago where a guy gets blown off his motorcycle and flies right into a moving turbine jet engine, which in turn explodes. I laughed watching that clip as I know such a stunt probably wouldn’t happen in real life. At least I don’t think it’s been covered on Spike TV’s "1000 Ways to Die" yet. I could be wrong.
"The Losers", however, doesn’t feature nerdy high school kids dressed in superhero garb that includes an 11-year-old girl delivering deadly vigilante style justice to the bad guys the way the characters do in "Kick-Ass." I expect this kind of behavior to come from adult characters in violent R rated movies like "The Losers", or anything Quentin Tarantino has churned out over the years. When I see an 11-year-old girl dressed in a purple leather outfit with a mask named Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moritz) use some double-edged sword to single handedly wipe out a few henchmen and leave them for dead, I don’t see anything funny about it. I find it kind of disturbing.
As is the scene between Hit Girl and her father, code named “Big Daddy” (Nicolas Cage) who when asked what she wants for her birthday, it’s not a dog but a bench made model 42 butterfly knife. I have no idea what that is. I am sure she uses it to slaughter the bad guys in one scene. Come to think of it, I have no idea what half the arsenal of automatic weapons are called that Big Daddy has adorning the walls of his little studio, which also doubles as his office drawing comic pictorials of New York City’s mob boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong) and his hit men. It turns out Big Daddy was a former decorated police officer who was framed by D’Amico and sent to prison. With the help of his daughter, he has plans for revenge.
All this is mixed in with the main story surrounding high school student Dave Livewski (Aaron Johnson), an avid comic book reader with few friends who is inspired to become a green suited superhero named Kick-Ass. While attempting to retrieve someone’s lost cat, Kick-Ass stumbles upon a group of thugs beating up on another guy one night and does to the group exactly what his name suggests, so much so, he becomes an overnight sensation on youtube.com where the number of hits reaches over 1 million.
It’s the result of Kick-Ass’ sudden popularity that Hit Girl and Big Daddy are born. So too is another superhero/anti-hero named Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who in real life is the son of mobster Frank D’Amico named Chris. Frank assumes it is Kick-Ass who’s been knocking off his henchmen and wants him dead. Chris hatches a plan to create a new superhero as a means to find Kick-Ass and perhaps even nab Big Daddy and Hit Girl at the same time.
Kick-Ass boasts less than a handful of humorous scenes with mock references to Batman and Superman as Dave’s friends, who have no idea he is actually Kick-Ass, asking each other if Kick-Ass and Red Mist were in a fight, who would win? It’s like listening to die-hard Star Wars geeks ask each other if Darth Vader went up against Darth Maul, who would be victorious, or to be more precise, Batman versus Superman.
If only the film offered more of these kinds of clever mock tributes to movies and superheroes past. In the tradition of Superman’s Lois Lane asking herself how every time the Man of Steel appears, Clark Kent is never around, there is a scene where Dave’s friends ponder the same thing as video of Kick-Ass and Big Daddy being captured by the gangsters is played out on network television and on the internet and ask themselves how strange it is that Dave is not around.
The trouble with "Kick-Ass" is fantasy and reality don’t mix. For every memorable sequence that comes up like that, the mood is quickly ruined, for example, by a shot of Dave’s superhero getting knifed by a bully. What starts out as fun with the sound of triumphant pulse pounding music as a means to get viewers excited, ends with Dave almost dying in the hospital after being hit by a car. It’s like getting punched in the stomach. The film is no longer fun.
I know some people reading this, in particular fans of violent comic books, will say I need to lighten up and that I am the reason why no one listens to movie critics anymore. I have no doubt they probably already compare film critics to Congress in that they are about as out of touch with what moviegoers like as the government is working for the American people.
I don’t mind mindless cartoonish R rated violence. As I said in the opening paragraph, I laughed watching that clip from "The Losers." I liked Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies with Uma Thurman from 2003 and 2004. Tarantino made those movies as a homage to the ultra-violent and bloody martial arts films. The Star Wars movies represent cartoonish violence, even Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005), which got a PG-13 because of what graphically happens to Anakin Skywalker near the end.
There is something wrong though when we see high school kids, and in particular, an 11-year-old girl acting out the same kind of blood thirsty violence that adult characters do, like as though seeing someone crushed to death inside a trash compactor will have no effect on someone that young.
I suppose I should be thankful that characters like Kick-Ass and Hit Girl killed off only the ones who had it coming to them. Their desire to become superheroes came from the comic books, if not from Big Daddy. At least they weren’t playing Doom and watching "Natural Born Killers" (1994) like the two young killers did as inspiration to murder fellow classmates at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado back in 1999 for no good reason.
©4/21/10
R, 117m. 2010
Cast & Credits: Aaron Johnson (Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Chris D’Amico/Red Mist), Mark Strong (Frank D’Amico), Chloe Grace Moretz (Mindy Macready/Hit Girl), Nicolas Cage (Damon Macready/Big Daddy), Omari Hardwick (Sergeant Marcus Williams), Xander Berkeley (Detective Gigante). Screenplay by Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman based on source material from the comic book: Kick-Ass by Mark Millar and John S. Romita. Directed by Matthew Vaughn.
"The Losers", however, doesn’t feature nerdy high school kids dressed in superhero garb that includes an 11-year-old girl delivering deadly vigilante style justice to the bad guys the way the characters do in "Kick-Ass." I expect this kind of behavior to come from adult characters in violent R rated movies like "The Losers", or anything Quentin Tarantino has churned out over the years. When I see an 11-year-old girl dressed in a purple leather outfit with a mask named Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moritz) use some double-edged sword to single handedly wipe out a few henchmen and leave them for dead, I don’t see anything funny about it. I find it kind of disturbing.
As is the scene between Hit Girl and her father, code named “Big Daddy” (Nicolas Cage) who when asked what she wants for her birthday, it’s not a dog but a bench made model 42 butterfly knife. I have no idea what that is. I am sure she uses it to slaughter the bad guys in one scene. Come to think of it, I have no idea what half the arsenal of automatic weapons are called that Big Daddy has adorning the walls of his little studio, which also doubles as his office drawing comic pictorials of New York City’s mob boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong) and his hit men. It turns out Big Daddy was a former decorated police officer who was framed by D’Amico and sent to prison. With the help of his daughter, he has plans for revenge.
All this is mixed in with the main story surrounding high school student Dave Livewski (Aaron Johnson), an avid comic book reader with few friends who is inspired to become a green suited superhero named Kick-Ass. While attempting to retrieve someone’s lost cat, Kick-Ass stumbles upon a group of thugs beating up on another guy one night and does to the group exactly what his name suggests, so much so, he becomes an overnight sensation on youtube.com where the number of hits reaches over 1 million.
It’s the result of Kick-Ass’ sudden popularity that Hit Girl and Big Daddy are born. So too is another superhero/anti-hero named Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who in real life is the son of mobster Frank D’Amico named Chris. Frank assumes it is Kick-Ass who’s been knocking off his henchmen and wants him dead. Chris hatches a plan to create a new superhero as a means to find Kick-Ass and perhaps even nab Big Daddy and Hit Girl at the same time.
Kick-Ass boasts less than a handful of humorous scenes with mock references to Batman and Superman as Dave’s friends, who have no idea he is actually Kick-Ass, asking each other if Kick-Ass and Red Mist were in a fight, who would win? It’s like listening to die-hard Star Wars geeks ask each other if Darth Vader went up against Darth Maul, who would be victorious, or to be more precise, Batman versus Superman.
If only the film offered more of these kinds of clever mock tributes to movies and superheroes past. In the tradition of Superman’s Lois Lane asking herself how every time the Man of Steel appears, Clark Kent is never around, there is a scene where Dave’s friends ponder the same thing as video of Kick-Ass and Big Daddy being captured by the gangsters is played out on network television and on the internet and ask themselves how strange it is that Dave is not around.
The trouble with "Kick-Ass" is fantasy and reality don’t mix. For every memorable sequence that comes up like that, the mood is quickly ruined, for example, by a shot of Dave’s superhero getting knifed by a bully. What starts out as fun with the sound of triumphant pulse pounding music as a means to get viewers excited, ends with Dave almost dying in the hospital after being hit by a car. It’s like getting punched in the stomach. The film is no longer fun.
I know some people reading this, in particular fans of violent comic books, will say I need to lighten up and that I am the reason why no one listens to movie critics anymore. I have no doubt they probably already compare film critics to Congress in that they are about as out of touch with what moviegoers like as the government is working for the American people.
I don’t mind mindless cartoonish R rated violence. As I said in the opening paragraph, I laughed watching that clip from "The Losers." I liked Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies with Uma Thurman from 2003 and 2004. Tarantino made those movies as a homage to the ultra-violent and bloody martial arts films. The Star Wars movies represent cartoonish violence, even Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005), which got a PG-13 because of what graphically happens to Anakin Skywalker near the end.
There is something wrong though when we see high school kids, and in particular, an 11-year-old girl acting out the same kind of blood thirsty violence that adult characters do, like as though seeing someone crushed to death inside a trash compactor will have no effect on someone that young.
I suppose I should be thankful that characters like Kick-Ass and Hit Girl killed off only the ones who had it coming to them. Their desire to become superheroes came from the comic books, if not from Big Daddy. At least they weren’t playing Doom and watching "Natural Born Killers" (1994) like the two young killers did as inspiration to murder fellow classmates at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado back in 1999 for no good reason.
©4/21/10
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