The deconstruction of the superhero genre is hardly a new thing as comics have been taking it apart and putting it back together again as early as the mid-eighties, but while the movies eventually caught on, there were rarely instances as gleefully fun as Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass. Essentially put together the same time as Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. were brainstorming the original comic, the original story was a far darker, humourously nihilistic affair that lingered on the extreme violence and well meaning, yet terrible irresponsibility shown by its cast of misfits. However, when Kick-Ass: The Movie arrived in cinemas a while later (movies obviously take longer to make than comics) there was some noticable differences between the two versions. Yes, Vaughn still lingered on the extreme violence and well meaning, yet terrible irresponsibility shown by its cast of misfits, but he also lightened things up significantly, trusting the absurdity of the situations to carry the vicious black comedy.
As a result, Kick-Ass, kicked ass.
Comic book loving, nobody, Dave Lizewski is a faceless teen living in New York who starts to wonder about a peculiar fact that’s been nagging at him for a while: how come no one has actually pulled on a suit and attempted to fight crime as a real life superhero? The answer, according to his friends, is easy – because you’d get fucking killed – but that doesn’t stop that nugget of an idea growing to the point where Dave buys a bright green and yellow diving suit, orders some batons online and starts patrolling the streets in the name of misguided justice under the name Kick-Ass. However, it ends pretty much how we all predicted when, in the midst of trying to stop a crime, Dave is stabbed and the hit by a passing car.
However, upon leaving the hospital with steel plates on his bones and dulled nerve endings, Dave finds that his obsession is still intact and resumes on his ill advised quest, even gaining fame after he actually stops a bout of mob violence on camera. However, Dave’s life is about to get way more complicated than just trying to convince Katie Deauxma that he’s not gay…
Mob boss Frank D’Amico is getting frustrated that his businesses are being hit by a mysterious vigilante who has no compunction about murdering the men on his payroll and after he hears that some crazy guy dressed up as a superhero is responsible, he soon makes the logical, but wrong, deduction that Kick-Ass is responsible. However, the vigilante in question is the vengeful Big Daddy, a former cop who has vowed to bring down D’Amico by any means necessary and has brainwashed his eleven year-old daughter, Mindy, into becoming the ferocious, limb-chopping, Hit-Girl. Caught in the middle of an escalating nightmare of murder, mob warfare and bazookas, Dave has to try and stay alive as more dubious heroes start coming out of the woodwork.
Before Kick-Ass, Matthew Vaughn had gone from being Guy Richie’s producer to crafting innovative, eccentric flicks that usually flipped the script on established genres; but after lending his intriguing slant to such genres as the gangster film (Layer Cake), the fantasy film (Stardust) and Marvel (X-Men: First Class), there’s an argument that he truly found his style within the anarchic chaos of Mark Millar’s provocative comic.
It would have been easy to copy the grimy, grim chuckles of Millar’s original tone in order to draw out edgy, uneasy chuckles from the material, but instead Vaughn approaches the material with an upbeat, almost carefree attitude to multiple murder and the weaponizing of a pre-teen into a foul-mouthed killing machine. In a bravura move, both Vaughn and his screenwriting collaborator Jane Goldman conveys the world of Kick-Ass the way that Dave does, with sense of optimism that frequently runs face first into the brick wall of an exaggerated reality. Sure, this is a bright, world full of primary colours and tragedy we can snicker at (the death of Dave’s mother by aneurysm is especially cruel), outfits also a world where a chikd dressed in a pink battle suit, wig and tartan skirt can casually drop a C-bomb before slicing a roomful of gang bangers into strips.
As a tone, it’s masterful: a realm where both heightened realism and utter lunacy can skip and frolic in total harmony that Vaughn continued to employ in his three Kingsman spy movies to varying degrees of success, but if the filmmakers had decided to follow Millar’s lead, Kick-Ass probably would have been next to unwatchable.
The cast embrace the chaos like a long list lover with Aaron Taylor-Johnson convincingly portraying the eternally hopeful doofus who hopes to give his life meaning by twatting muggers with big stick and he’s ably aided and abetted by a cast that contains the like of Clark Duke, Evan Peters (the other Quicksilver) and McLovin himself, Christopher Mintz-Plasse who rub shoulders with an array of Vaughn regulars such as Mark Strong, Dexter Fletcher and Jason Flemyng.
However, it’s the formidable tag-team of Nicolas Cage and Chloë Grace Moretz who up and walk away with the movie as Big Daddy and the showstopping Hit-Girl. Cage as the vengence-crazed parent who has created a fake reality in order to turn his little girl into a guided missile of gore and profanity is a revelation after nearly a decade of direct to DVD trash and his flipping between his Ned Flanders-esque civilian persona and his more imposing, Batman inspired one (complete with Adam West style voice patterns) is a joy to behold. But taking the gold is the then twelve year old Moretz whose character proves to be one of those one-in-a-million creations that’s just perfect.
The action is sublime, moving from grimy, clumsy brawls to slick, fluid gunfights that enthrall, amuse and excite while also being extraordinarily violent and it’s all scored by Vaughn’s talent of picking the correct music to fit the mood. But at no point does Kick-Ass forget to contain a heart either and you’ll genuinely care when one of our main characters are in jeopardy and sustaining a measured and obviously painful beating.
Are there issues? Some, but they’re easily forgivable such as the occasional ropey example of a visual effects shot – but some may be put off by the causally blasé attitude to human life or the fact that the script chiefly runs off a steady fuel of male wish fulfilment that comes with the “gay best friend” suplot (I know it’s a movie, but is any girl going to instantly make out with the guy whose been lying to her in order to get creepily near her?).
Still, arriving at the perfect time to jab a set of brass knuckles into the ribs of the superhero genre just before it all went stratospheric with The Avengers, Kick-Ass is a brutally cheeky sideways look at comic book culture that has a tongue burried expertly in its cheek as a fist plows into its jaw.
Starting on the streets and ending with its surviving characters soaring away like Superman, Kick-Ass proves to be a dose of pure joy that raises your spirits thanks to comedic acts of horrendous violence.
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