Flick Flak: Kick Ass
Sub-Ed Note: Neil has written a ton of film reviews and we'll be sticking them up over the week, so keep and eye out for the "Flick Flak:" prefix.
Director: Matthew Vaughn
With: Aaron Johnson, Garrett M. Brown, Sophie Wu, Nicolas Cage
15, 117 mins
There are many reasons to go and watch this Kick-Ass, but possibly the best one is that the Daily Mail described it as “evil”. What better incentive could there be to watch a film? With this now infamous review the Daily Mail surely inspired a few people to see it who wouldn't have otherwise. More on this crazy review in a moment.
I am a bit of a comic nerd. I love Batman, and have read a few of the graphic novels which have been turned into movies, such as Sin City, V For Vendetta, Watchmen, and 300. I have also just finished reading Kick-Ass, which is written by Mark Millar, and in my opinion the film and the graphic novel are as good as each other, and each brilliant for different reasons. The film is certainly better than Wanted, Mark Millar's other book-to-film conversion, and we can look forward to further movies based on his books in general, and no doubt on the next Kick-Ass book.
This is a brilliant film. Personally I can find no flaw with it, probably because, with its comic book and film references, it was right up my street. There is a good chance that I took it too seriously and got into it a bit too much, but I take that as a sign of its quality. The acting is great from all concerned, especially Aaron Johnson, whose American accent is faultless, and from the dependable Mark Strong, who rarely puts a foot wrong playing a villain. For me the film really shines in its perfect balance of absurd and tense, funny and twisted. Many times the director Matthew Vaughn intersperses laugh out loud funny with scenes of impending brutality, and it works astonishingly well. For instance, the two costumed heroes Kick-Ass and Red Mist dancing like a couple of nerdy teenagers while driving is cut with scenes of gangsters preparing to ambush Kick-Ass with a view to killing him.
Another example, and the part of the film which I found most uncomfortable (and I don't mean that as a criticism) was the relationship between Nicholas Cage's Big Daddy (Cage doing a great impression of Adam West) and his daughter, Hit Girl. Their relationship is both sweet and hilarious, though if you dwell on it, really quite wrong and tragic. However I quite admire the story's moral muddiness and the fact that we are not really told how we should feel about the pair, ruthless killers though they are. Incidentally, Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl is brilliant, managing to be adorable and quite scary as well.
It is her character which has caused controversy, especially with the aforementioned Daily Mail, which worried that the film sexualised the 12-year-old, as well as glamorising violence. This is clearly absolute rubbish. I have listened to Mark Millar answer these comments and have to agree with him: the only bit of Hit Girl's flesh on display is her chin, her costume is intentionally baggy, and if the Mail's reviewer finds a 12-year-old in a school uniform sexy then he is the one with the issue, not the film. Also, unlike films such as Spiderman, this film shows the brutal reality of attempting to fight crime; on Kick-Ass's first outing as the wetsuited crusader he is stabbed and hospitalised for months. Surely this does not glamorise knife crime or vigilantism. I felt that the Daily Mail's review took the wrong message entirely from the film. What about the idea of one person becoming sick of people not looking out for each other and deciding to do something about it? Even dressed in that awful costume, when Kick-Ass declared that he would rather die than let some thugs beat someone to death while others just looked on, I was pretty moved by the nobility of his actions. Happily such scenes never felt forced or cheesy.
The one slim flaw with the film that I could mention is the relatively happy outcome of Dave / Kick-Ass's love life. Particularly next to the graphic novel, Katie's acceptance that he has been pretending to be gay to be close to her feels a little jarring in an otherwise brutally honest story. However this is barely a problem, especially given that other harsh outcomes of the story are left in (no spoilers!).
To sum up, I loved this film (in case you hadn't guessed) and will definitely be buying it on DVD to watch some more!
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