Kick-Ass

I didn't hate Kick-Ass, but I didn't particularly enjoy it, either. I didn't find it morally reprehensible, but it certainly skirted the boundaries of good taste. I was never bored by it, but I found it only periodically suspenseful, not remotely funny, or the story engaging. As usually happens with love-it-or-hate-it movies, I was right down the middle on it, grading it (depending on the ranking system), a C, two stars, or five out of ten.

The film, directed by Matthew Vaughn and from a comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., concerns an average high school kid and comic book fan (Aaron Johnson) who wonders why no one has ever attempted to be a real-life superhero (he apparently has never heard of Captain Sticky.) His friends sensibly tell him that without superpowers, such a fool would almost certainly die within a day, but Johnson perserveres, purchases a Scuba suit, and creates a secret identity that provides the title. Indeed, on his first attempt to stop crime he is stabbed and gets run over by a car, but undaunted he tries again and his efforts in stopping an assault end up videotaped and on the Internet. He becomes a sensation.

This attracts the attention of two other superheroes, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his young daughter Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz). It is here that the film kick-starts into an entertaining section and also earns the raised eyebrows. Moretz, as the pint-sized, purple-wigged Hit Girl, takes hold of the movie and doesn't let go. She enters the action dealing out gleeful carnage to the tune of the Banana Splits theme, and anyone who might have been dozing before this certainly will be wide awake after this scene. Moretz is foul-mouthed and kills without conscience, trained by her father in martial arts and a variety of weapons (we first see her Dad shooting her in the chest to get her accustomed to a bulletproof vest, and then being rewarded with an afternoon of bowling).

Cage, it turns out, is interested in revenge on a crooked cop and a crime boss (Mark Strong). Strong's son, a pencil-necked geek (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) creates his own costumed vigilante, Red Mist (complete with a Flock of Seagulls hairstyle). It's all very colorful, profane, and extremely violent (a man is microwaved to death, another is shot with a bazooka).

Where I thought this film failed was its unsuccessful attempt to meld two distinctly different styles--it was kind of like Sky High meets Kill Bill. The lighthearted tone of a nerd trying to be a superhero is viciously undercut by the bloodletting. It was like watching an episode of Saved by the Bell where Screech takes out an axe and kills everyone (I know that sounds like something you'd like to see, but be careful what you wish for). As for the hand-wringing about Moretz, I wasn't too troubled by it. I think the language is typical of any schoolyard in America. The one objectionable scene might be the one in which she gets pummeled by Strong. Watching a tween girl getting assaulted in a film that fundamentally is one long joke is disconcerting, but I don't worry about Moretz in the long run. Incidentally, I somehow missed her using the word "cunt", and I was waiting for it. I did catch her saying "motherfucker" and "cock."

Johnson lacks charisma, but that may have been the point, as he is supposed to be bland, though this makes Hit Girl the far more interesting character, and when she's off screen we naturally wait impatiently for her to come back. There's a subplot that has Johnson's school crush, the fetching Lyndsy Fonseca, warming up to him because she thinks he's gay, a totally dumb and pointless digression. Vaughn does make good use of Cage's increasingly idiosynchratic acting style--when he's Big Daddy he uses an Adam West-ian cadence, and when not in costume he sounds like a children's TV show host.

A couple of weird things--Elizabeth McGovern makes a bizarre, silent cameo as Johnson's mother (she drops dead at the breakfast table) and what's with Hit Girl's real name of Mindy Macready--a name shared by the troubled country singer? Was that in the original comic book? The name seems too unusual for it to be a coincidence.