Kick-Ass

2010, Rated R, 117 minutes Directed by Matthew Vaughn, Written by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn based on the graphic novel by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., Produced by Adam Bohling, Matthew Vaughn and others, Cinematography by Ben Davis, Original Music by Marius De Vries, Ilan Eshkeri, Henry Jackman, & John Murphy

With: Aaron Johnson (Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass), Lyndsy Fonseca (Katie Deauxma), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Chris D’Amico/Red Mist), Mark Strong (Frrank D’Amico), Chloe Moretz (Mindy Macready/Hit-Girl), Nicolas Cage (Damon Macready/Big Daddy)

Superhero movies have been around for long time. In the past 10 years they have become assured box office success raking in hundreds of millions each. The majority of these films tackles a standard plot of a superhero taking the law into his own hands to clean up the city or exact revenge. Kick Ass, the latest movie adapted from a graphic novel, creates a new premise around the typical superhero plot. The protagonist is no longer a superhero but instead an average teenage boy, a neurotic father and his young daughter. Kick Ass is a new direction in the superhero drama that also represents the progressively more violent and shocking nature of today’s entertainment industry.

The story centers around Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), your average teen boy who lives an average life filled with friends, comic books, and angst toward and lust for girls. There is nothing special about him and there is no Peter Parker moment where he is given superpowers because he was bitten by a mutant spider. He grows tired of his meaningless existence and decides it is time to take matters into his own hands and become a masked crusader. He quickly discovers the task is not as easy as he anticipated and winds up in the hospital after his first foray into fighting crime. After a long recovery he goes back to the streets and becomes world famous after one of his battles is posted on youtube. He finds himself with more requests than he can handle but manages to pick ones that may benefit him as well such as helping the girl who he has a crush on. He finds he is not alone in the fight against crime when he encounters Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and her father Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) on a job and the violence ratchets up tenfold. 

Hit Girl was highly trained and disciplined by her father and able to take out 6 men with a bow staff double edged sword. The duo means business and are continually working towards taking down mob boss Frank D’Amico. Frank believes that these super heros are hurting his business and makes it his personal vendetta to eliminate them. He employs every means necessary and even lets his son attempt to infiltrate the superhero world by dressing up as one himself to bring them into his confidence and hand them over to his father, whose attention and approval he desperately desires.

The movie follows a typical superhero movie story line: it juxtaposes the characters superhero lives and their “normal” lives. In the case of Kick Ass  the normal life is very funny with Hit Girls training sessions and Dave’s struggle over how to become the boyfriend of Lyndsy (Katie Deauxma) who is friends with him in large part because she thinks he is gay. The plot progresses along with all of the scenes adding up to the typical final battle scene where the superheroes face off against the mob at Frank’s home and headquarters.

While the movie follows a standard superhero story arc, the individual parts of the arc are unique, funny and very well done. Director Matthew Vaughn does an excellent job of creating what it might look like for an ordinary teen to become a superhero and all the struggles, setback and triumphs that entails. Dave superhero persona Kick-Ass is not a finely tuned machine with hyper sensitive sense but instead a slightly clumsy kid who consistently gets beat up when he fights crime and cannot build up the gumption to leap from one rooftop to another like a typical superhero would not hesitate to do. The father daughter relationship of Mindy (Hit Girl), and Damon (Big Daddy) is a very humorous take on a father raising a child the way he feels is best; in this case that entails shooting his daughter in the chest so she knows what it feels like and giving her a birthday present of two butterfly knives. Vaughn brings a unique humor that often mocks the superhero genre itself. 

At the same time, the movie inhabits the very genre it is making fun of. Things may not go as expected within the story but it is still a movie about superheroes. The crime fighting, while done in an often mocking style, is very similar to standard superhero fare with enormous amounts of violence, blood, profanity and humor added. The final fight scene is a beautifully rendered conclusion that successfully fuses spaghetti westerns sound and standoff, Tarantino tone and violence, superhero good v. evil and fast cinematography and choreography into it’s own unique brand of superb visuals, comedy, violence, powerful music and intense action. That scene alone encapsulates the entire feel and nature of the film: a humorous, graphically violent, disturbing, excellently done groundbreaking and game changing movie.

Kick Ass is the latest step in the ratcheting up of extreme content for the purpose of entertainment. Many of the scenes are intensely violent and graphic and that becomes even more intense when you see that a 11 year old girl is the one enacting most of that violence. Hit girl is the archetype of how far violence has come in the entertainment industry as she impales men, shoots others at point blank range and all while watching her father being burned alive. In the days of the Roman empire, crowds would gather to watch the spectacle of gladiators do battle to the death. They screamed for violence and laughed and cheered at death. 

In a post-viewing discussion the point was brought up by a friend that Kick Ass, in many ways, is the embodiment of the Roman spectacle that is our entertainment industry; the main difference being that what was once performed live is now acted out on screen. No real deaths occurred in the film, but the crowd relished in every shot, every slice, every crushed body and every death that took place on screen. Death has become a laughable moment: when Hit Girl attacks the mob as she runs through the hallway she shoots one of the men two times in the head at point blank range while the audience laughed with glee at the spectacle. This is not just entertainment but also a barometer showing what our culture demands...and we demand blood; more than that we demand that blood be spilt in more graphic and disturbing ways, perhaps by making the distributor of that blood an 11 year old girl.

This is not meant to be a scathing indictment on the entertainment industry or to say that Kick Ass is a bad movie. On the contrary, the movie is a very well done, groundbreaking change of pace in many ways. It twists the superhero plot in new ways and brings innovation to an overdone genre. It also brings up issues such as how far is too far, how should we react and respond when the scenes unfold the way they do, and where are we as a culture. I am neither condoning nor condemning the choices made but am asking you to not simply take the movie at face value but instead use the film as a means to engage in discussion about the nature of ourselves, our culture and our world.

B+

Content Advisory

this is a very intense and graphic film. there is brief frontal nudity, several sexual situations, very brutal violence often doled out by an 11 year old girl, very pervasive language and several scenes of drug use

Food for thought/discussion

1. Throughout the film there are everyday citizens ignoring violence and injustice. Is this representative of our society?

2. What comment/critique does the movie make in regards to Damon Macready raising his daughter to be a tactical killer?

3. What is Dave’s motive for becoming Kick-Ass? How does this comment on the nature of teenagers?

4. Does the movie go to far in its depiction of violence and content or is it merely giving the people what they want? How       far is too far?

5. Compare/contrast this movie as entertainment with other historical society’s notion of entertainment. Is this movie progression or regression of our society?