Movie Review: Kick-Ass

Editor’s Note:  We don’t typically use language like that in a headline, but this movie takes you places you don’t want to go.  Rebecca Cusey examines this very controversial but well-made film that is definitely not for everyone.  Choose wisely!

In film, there’s subversive and there’s reset-the-genre subversive. A new superhero movie turns the genre on its head, starting with a title that many TV stations won’t allow uttered on-air. Kick-Ass. With violence cranked up, irony maxed out, and the addition of a swearing, lethal ten year old girl, this entertaining and engrossing film rewrites the rules. But is that a good thing?

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a typical, practically invisible high school kid. He’s not good at sports, not particularly smart, and doesn’t have cool friends or a cute girlfriend. He isn’t special in any way. Living in the kind of neighborhood where mugging is a common occurrence and going to school requires passing through a metal detector, Dave keeps his head down.

Meanwhile, across town, a revenge-addled father (Nicolas Cage as Big Daddy) teaches his pony-tailed daughter to take a bullet in the Kevlar vest. By shooting her at close range. It’s just one of many “I can’t believe they just did that” shocking scenes.

Mob boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong) runs the town, but Big Daddy lives to bring him down. D’Amico’s son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, McLovin’ in SuperBad), loves comic books and wants to join daddy’s business. He’ll soon find a way to combine the two.

One day Dave looks around him, wakes up, and wonders why no one does anything to stop the reign of violent and evil men. He doesn’t phrase it in such philosophical terms. He simply ponders why no one ever puts on a superhero costume and fights crime. He’s shocked, deep in the core of his being, that people stand by and watch, doing nothing, as bad men have their way with society. So he buys a wetsuit and a couple of batons and sets out to put himself between the thugs and their victims. He becomes Kick-Ass.

Turns out, without a superpower, superhero work hurts. Hurts a lot. The closest thing Dave has to a superpower is the ability to take a beating. It’s one thing he’s good at. The film shows his continued abuse in graphic detail.

Eventually, his paths cross with crazy Dig Daddy and his highly-trained daughter, Hit Girl. Only about ten years old, Hit Girl has learned to be a killing machine in a purple wig. She wields knives, kicks windpipes, and shoots pistols with deadly accuracy. And she swears like a sailor.

Played by Chloe Mortez with chutzpa and convincablility of someone twice her age, Hit Girl makes the film both absorbing and somewhat horrifying. She slashes throats. She impales with long knives. She delivers kill shots to the head with the accompanying red mist out the other side. It’s hard to keep count, but the tiny tot dispatches dozens upon dozens of bad guys in gruesome and violent ways.

Perhaps a first in movie history, she is on the receiving end as well. That’s right. The audience is held spellbound as grown men beat up a little girl.

All this is done with flawless directing and fight scenes that make you hold your breath. One done in strobe light is particularly amazing. Another scene shows Hit Girl’s view as she stalks bad guys with the help of night vision goggles, a view which looks suspiciously like a video game. Heck, it probably is footage from the actual video game version of the movie, which is likely being shipped to stores as I type. The title character achieves fame through a video on MySpace, also the conduit for contacting crime fighters, as opposed to a light in the sky.  The movie feels unbelievably fresh and modern.

There are other aspects of the movie to make parents deeply uncomfortable, including extended segments about masturbation, some nudity, and teen sex. There’s some drug use and constant foul language, much of it coming out of the prepubescent mouth of Hit-Girl. However, the high level of violence is the hardest to take. The audience doesn’t just see the guy put into the industrial microwave. We see his head explode. In fact, we see many heads explode and throats cut, blood spurting in all directions.

Leo Partible, contributor to The Gospel According to Superheroes: Religion and Pop Culture, says such movies are “expressions of rage and fear we all have.” Dave’s crazy outrage that “nobody does anything” is the only morally sane position. Comic book Fanboys love the violence and envelope-pushing themes. The question for the movie is whether it will appeal to the non Fanboy demographic. “It might be too intense for women, for the demographic of women who will go to a superhero movie,” Partible said.

The movie was too intense for major movie studios. Perhaps fearing to produce such a violent film with such a young girl, multiple studios turned it down. The director found independent financing.

So, should you see it? Your children should not see this film, including teens. Rated R, the film crosses many lines. Yet, it’s a wild and exhilarating ride. Despite its many immoral elements, it has a very modern and moral core. Like the majority of superhero movies, it’s about standing up to evil. Indeed, Kick Ass is an excellently made film and one that people will be talking about for a long time. There’s virtue in knowing what formulates the thinking of your friends and neighbors. For those adult viewers who shrug off violence and graphic content, this is the movie hit of the spring.