Short Review: Replace "Kick" with "Lame".


I want to open with a few thoughts on the title of the movie. While words like "ass" and "shit" have become normalized in society, you can hear them spouted off in casual, public settings, the words are still crude. The use of the word "ass" in the title of film may not even register for younger folks who don't know of a time when the word was considered out-of-bounds. The use of the word is bad for society, in my opinion. It is just another drop in the bucket.

The premise of the film is simple, a common loser chooses to suit up like a superhero. He gains some fame through his crime fighting and catches the eye of local thugs. During his exploits, the hero, who names himself "Kick Ass" discovers there are others who also dress up - but these others, a father/daughter team (Big Daddy and Hit Girl) are the real deal.

This is a celebration of our emasculated society. The "hero" Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is Peter Parker without the awe-shucks disposition. Dave's narration makes references to Parker's heroic journey and sarcastically contrasts himself with Spider-man. Dave is a hapless nerd and struggles with women. His mother has died suddenly. He has difficulty speaking to the pretty girl at school. He fantasizes about his buxom teacher and masturbates to Internet porn.

The males in his life offer no direction. His emotionless, stagnant father is little more than a human skin tag slumped over a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table. All of Dave's friends are post modern nerds who worship comic books.

Dave begins to transform into a man when he takes on the persona of Kick Ass. He dons a homemade superhero costume and finds the mettle to confront local, low-level criminals. It isn't long before Dave runs into Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz).

Big Daddy, as his name implies, is the supreme father-figure in the story. He is everything Dave's father is not - supportive, deeply interested in his child and assertive. Big Daddy has a purpose and acts on it. He openly shows affection for his child.

Big Daddy's purpose is to destroy the criminal empire of Frank D'Amico (Frank Strong). D'Amico has a son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). This father/son duo are the final set of parent/children in the film. Their relationship is one of a father passing his empire to his son. Chris pleads to learn the family business. When Frank begins to suspect it is Kick Ass who is killing his men, Chris follows in Dave's footsteps and dons his own costume and becomes "Red Mist". Another male teen who needs to don a false pretense to become more manly.


The view of manhood in the film is that all men are hollow, unsettled goofs. Even the men who are strong, still are immoral monsters. All of the fathers in the film are all useless. Dave's Dad is a lump. Big Daddy and Frank are involved but lead their children into harm's way and into lives of crime. The only happy men in the film are Dave's geek friends who live vicariously through superheroes, but otherwise do nothing at all. Dave himself is an uncertain, purposeless hack who quickly subordinates himself to the twelve-year-old girl Hit Girl. Even in the final moments, when Dave assumes a heroic stature, he still is a pale threat when compared to his girl colleague.

Hit Girl is the only real heroic character in the story. She is strong willed, has direction and is capable of change. I had a huge issue with her character however. Hit Girl, again a child of 12, is shown slaughtering villains with a cute smile. As she reigns sanguine terror upon a hallway of armed thugs Joan Jett and the Blackhearts' Bad Reputation plays, giving the hyper violent scene a cooled hipness that borders on the psychotic.


There is an amoral approach to the strong violence in the film that is unsettling when considered. It doesn't show a lack of restraint, it shows a lack restraints in the first place. In one scene, Big Daddy and Hit Girl, as a father and daughter, giggle as they watch a thug pleading for mercy as his car is crushed in a junkyard. They have handcuffed the doomed thug to the steering wheel. Director Matthew Vaughn (Stardust) is comfortable with showing this man beg for life until he pops like a full tick inside the car, spraying blood in all directions.

When violence begins it doesn't end until everyone has been brutally put down. In a climatic scene the systematic gunning down of a room full of thugs is shown in first person. Replicating the first-person shooter video games, we go from one bad guy to the next, pulling the trigger and seeing blood splash as they fall. Vaughn revels in the violence and labors to make it as cool and slick as possible, all the while he avoids any moral construct to the gore. Big Daddy's vigilantism is confronted by his former partner, but this moment of morality is washed away by Vaughn's next thrilling display of bloodletting.

The film fails in the final act because of the moral vacuum Vaughn creates. Since none of the characters are moral and none of them hold any useful ideals other than might makes right. There is no depth to the final confrontation. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the villain is stopped because the heroes dispatch him through criminal means. It doesn't matter if Dave becomes a hero, because in the end, he's still not a man - he's just a kid who can take a punch.

The final act of this movie is interesting in how grandly it falls apart. The film goes along its own little amoral path and retains its sense. Suddenly the confrontation looms and everything becomes wildly incomprehensible and severely wanders away from any sense of normality that was at the heart of the first 3/4ths of the story. It is the cinematic equivalent of the screenwriter throwing his computer across the room and screaming "screw it! I'm outta here!"

This is not a good movie. If anything it will take from you - it will take the precious time you spend on it and it will deaden your mind. Avoid this production, it is not worthy of your patronage.




Related Reviews:
Superhero movies
Iron Man 2 (2010)
The Dark Knight (2008)


Other Critic's Reviews:
Rolling Stone
Chicago Metro-Mix



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Labels: Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, film, Mark Strong, movie review, Nicolas Cage, superhero