“What the fuck have you done lately?”

That line comes from Mark Millar’s comic book series “Wanted”. In a nifty self-aware way, it’s at the centre of the film KICK-ASS which is also adapted from a Millar comic series. It’s the mantra of a group of kids who know they are capable of more. It’s a shot to the chest for any of us who stand on the sidelines and don’t have the guts to stand up for what’s right. And it’s what gives a shockingly violent movie a lot of heart.

We begin by meeting Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson); an unspectacular teenager yearning to be something more. Inspired by the comic books he surrounds himself with, he decides to go vigilante and fight crime as a superhero. Small problem – he has no powers, and no training. During his first act of justice, he gets pummelled within an inch of his life. The upside, is that to save him, doctors had to graft a lot of steel plates into his skeleton, leaving him rather impervious to pain.

His next time out goes much better: not only does he win the fight, but he gets massive You Tube exposure thanks to gawkers with their camera phones. Dave is now much more than a mere mortal, he’s Kick-Ass, here to save the day…or your cat…whatever you need.

Meanwhile, we are introduced to Damon Macready and his daughter Mindy (Nicolas Cage and Chloe Grace Moretz). After being framed and sent to prison during his daughter’s infancy, Damon has grown a tad overprotective…and angry. He wants vengeance on Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong), the mob boss who set him up. He reaps his vengeance by becoming “Big Daddy”, loading up on weapons – lots of them, legal and wildly illegal alike – and thwarting Frank’s business at every turn. Oh, he trains his daughter to help him.

Know those girls that would rather play hockey than play with dolls? Mindy is like that; but replace the hockey stick with a butterfly knife. She becomes Hit Girl, and with Big Daddy reaches out to Kick-Ass to make him a better hero.

The three of them start taking on Frank’s goons, leaving him with precious little ideas. In a Hail-Mary-pass manner, he turns to his son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who suggests the only way to find a hero is to become a hero. He follows the Kick-Ass formula of grassroots heroism and becomes Red Mist, an internet phenomenon in his own right…hoping that Kick-Ass, Hit Girl, and Big Daddy will take the bait and reach out to him. maybe then he can crawl out from under his father’s massive shadow.


Aaron Johnson draws us in as the titular character. His body language perfectly captures a kid whose guts have decided to do something extraordinary, but whose brain still isn’t convinced. He’s that guy you see on the high dive at the pool…arms wrapped around his torso…taking ages to decide whether to jump or take the climb of shame back down the ladder.

Great as Johnson is, he is damned near upstaged by Moretz and Cage. It’s their relationship that makes the film a winner. They kick ass better than Kick-Ass kicks ass, but behind the cowls and capes, they are a father and daughter whose relationship is very loving and very real. Cage hams it up appropriately (often doing his best Adam West meets William Shatner), but there is never a moment where we doubt his devotion to his daughter. He isn’t putting her through this to follow in his footsteps…he only wants her to be able to protect herself. You can see in her eyes that she knows this isn’t completely normal…but she loves her dad, and he hasn’t let her down yet, so she follows his lead.

These characters are all reason to see the movie alone, but it’s watching them come out and play that makes this an intense experience. Despite being less than two hours, the film is loaded with action sequences, all of which are expertly crafted. Hit Girl is at the centre of the best ones, which is what makes them slightly more unique. Not since Gogo Yubari swung her mace in KILL BILL has a schoolgirl amassed such a bodycount.

Much has been made of how the film earns its R rating. It might seem strange that a film with three young actors in the lead scores such a harsh rating, but you can’t expect anything less when the film includes a scene of the villain kicking the crap out of an eleven-year-old. The skirmish between Frank and Hit Girl aside, the violence is pretty intense; bodies cook, limbs are lost, bullets fly, and none of it has artistic merit. I don’t believe that makes the film overly exploitive – it is based on a violent comic book after all – I just believe that it means that it isn’t for young kids. All of this goes beyond the fact that Hit Girl uses language that would make a sailor blush.

Intensity aside, what KICK-ASS does best is get the human element right. Kick-Ass’ ambition, Hit Girl’s devotion, Red Mist’s isolation. These kids are not caricatures, they are very human and very relatable. You look at their faces and you can see the unrest and desire. Deep down in all of them, they know they’d rather be the one in the middle of the fray…than standing on the sidelines with a camera.

Matineescore: ★ ★ ★ 1/2 out of ★ ★ ★ ★
What did you think? Please leave comments with your thoughts and reactions on KICK-ASS.

16 Replies to “KICK-ASS”

  1. Gah! This movie starting to hit me like last year's Watchmen. Trying to gauge if I want to see it, but every other review seems to be polar opposite of the last!

    Not sure what to go with. Sounds like a movie I'd enjoy for pure fun sake, but I really don't know :\

  2. It's really good, I think. I especially liked Nicholas Cage, maybe because my expectancy levels for him have dropped significantly, but I thought he was really good.

  3. Awesome movie. It really caught me off guard. I was NOT expecting it to be such a quality movie. Check out my short review of it if you'd like.

    I'm happy you brought up KILL BILL. I said in my review that I thought this was a mix between a Quentin Tarantino movie and Zombieland and its use of both humor and action.

    I agree with you that Daddy and Hit Girl certainly seemed better and charismatic characters than Kick-Ass, but I also really liked his character too.

    I really loved this movie for all of the moments that you don't know everything is going to be okay. The fact that Kick-Ass's character is only human makes the audience's experience a bit more on-edge and open to the fact that he could be badly hurt, lose the fight, or even die. They really played around a lot with this vulnerability in multiple scenes.

  4. It isn't a stretch for Nic Cage which is annoying because he has the ability to stretch, but even though he doesn't Simon, he's damn good as Big Daddy.

    Casey, it has the violent humor of Tarantino where it's so exaggerated and brutal that it's pleasurable in the midst of it's fantasy.

    A well created movie that stands very well on it's own.

    I'm not impervious to the negative reviews, but I'm not connecting with that opinion at all.

  5. @ Univarn… This one couldn't have less in common with WATCHMEN. Lemme boil it down for ya: the movies that are drubbing this film have massive issue with the role/treatment of Hit Girl. If you can get past that, you'll enjoy it.

    @ Simon… Yeah, I know what you're talking about with Nic Cage. I haven't liked him in anything for a long time, but really thought he played the campiness of Big daddy just right.

    @ Casey… Glanced at your review briefly, but expect a comment when I get a second to read it proper.

    That unpredictability is indeed well used, especially considering the fate of one major character. Kinda makes these characters the anti-Supermen…heroes that are so vulnerable, you actually worry for them!

    @ Heather… Thanks again for talking about this one with me – certainly was a lively discussion. Now go find yerself some cottage cheese and pickles, I think you're gonna need 'em.

  6. As you already know, I loathed the movie, and unfortunately disagree with pretty much everything you say here. The characters were caricatures, and completely uninteresting ones at that, who blabber on at agonzing length about the Internet and spout dialogue that Apple must have paid a shit-ton for.

    And yes, the girl is exploited. This is absolute bargain basement Tarantino, implementing the violence and nothing else. The similarities end with the katana and the gory knife wounds. There is no self-awareness or homages to generic execution, only a misguided, infantile joy over making shit blow up, even when the movie is supposed to be about everyday people becoming superheroes. Cage is awful, Johnson vanilla. Hated it the more I saw of it.

  7. Count me in on the negative side of things regarding "Kick-Ass." My problem wasn't with the actual physical violence of the film – In fact, I think the film's content has been largely over-exaggerated; in my opinion, it earns its R-rating, and that's that.

    My problem was with Vaughn's senseless presentation of the violence and his complete disregard of tone. In one scene, the violence is meant to be comical and fun, and in the next, it is supposed to be harrowing in powerful.

    This sort of random organization makes no artistic or emotional sense to me, and frankly, I am shocked that you found yourself emotionally involved with this film.

    For one thing, it has no idea whether it wants to be a satire or not. You can't make fun of a dramatic line from Spiderman, and then present an even cornier dramatic scene five minutes later and merit an emotional reaction from the audience.

  8. @ Joel… I don't think the characters babbling about the internet was all that much of a stretch. For starters, they're all kids – they spend half their lives on the internet. It's not like they were all flashing the latest and greatest in hardware. Heck, they weren't even flashing the latest and greatest in social networking.

    Beyond that, let's not forget that it's a wireless world these days, and if news of a superhero were to actually break, chances are we would all indeed learn about it through a computer or wireless device.

    I think there's a good message in the character of Hit Girl. She's very aware of what her family has gone through – rare for an eleven year old. Plus, what's wrong with a child being able to defend herself? I'd much rather see her jump in and shed some blood than watch a child scream for their life like in JURASSIC PARK.

    Johnson wasn't vanilla, he just got overshadowed by Cage. Cage wasn't awful, he was just having fun finally getting to play a superhero.

    I really think there was a lot to latch on to in this movie, sorry to hear you didn't dig it?

  9. Glad to see you liked this and I agree with many of your points. I too don't agree with Joel's review but I can see where Danny is coming from with his criticisms and think he makes a valid argument for the tone: I've said as much on his blog.

  11. @ Danny… This might sound bad, but what might have helped me enjoy it was the way I wasn't over-thinking it. I just let it play out, and went along for the ride. So whole the emotional or philosophical rhythm might have felt a little off, it wasn't phasing me because I was just in it for fun, holding on to my formulated opinions until the dust had settled.

    @ Film Intel… (Thanks for reading) I'm still surprised how divisive this movie is throughout the critical and blogging community. part of me wonders how much of that has to do with marketing and expectations.

    @ Fitz… Can't say I'm a big Cage fan, but Lordy did he ever have me diggin' his part in this movie!

  12. I agree with pretty much everything here. There was a surprising amount of substance below the surface here. That's one thing that really bothered me about Wanted. It was too busy trying to be awesome and completely squandered the originality and point of the comic. Kick-Ass succeeds admirably in that regard. Good review.

  13. Your description of Aaron Johnson as "a kid whose guts have decided to do something extraordinary, but whose brain still isn't convinced" is right on! I like that he's so completely average: average height, average looks, average hobbies. That works for a character like this.

    Surprisingly there isn't much about "Kick-Ass" I didn't like. I even liked Nicholas Cage, who played it cool and (for once) didn't overact. His approximation of the gravelly Batman-suit voice was aces.

  15. I honestly loved that movie – just because it's a snarky, almost bitter, love letter to the genre. It isn't really a deconstruction nor an attempt to move heroes to the real world, just a movie pitched with the same level of snark that its target audience is prone to use.

    It doesn't do anything new, but it has a few smart ideas (and a few great performances) in there.

  16. @ Sebastian… Exactly! That's sort of why I'm surprised some people are getting so negative about it. For me it felt like it said an awful lot, but perhaps for some it was trying to play too many angles at once.

    @ Meredith… Interesting note from the /Filmcast: Cage's decision to do the Adam West voice wasn't in the script, and wasn't even something he discussed until he just started doing it as the cameras rolled. Some in production thought he'd just completely screwed up an entire day's worth of shooting until Vaughan explained what he understood cage was doing and why it worked.

    @ Mistress… For what it's worth, I'm looking forward to THE LOSERS as well, though I don't think it will be nearly this good. Hope you dig KICK-ASS when you finally get to see it.

    Oh, as for the meme – I put my answers up on the DOTM facebook page – go look!

    @ Darren… Exactly! Again, I wonder what people who hated this movie were looking for – though one fellow blogger responded to that question with "A good movie"…touche!.

    Thanks for reading btw, love your blog.

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