I’m
glad I saw Kingsmen (by Mark Millar, the
same graphic novelist who wrote Kick-Ass,)
before I saw this movie. If I hadn’t
(and if I hadn’t known the connection,) I’d have been totally thrown by the
hyper-violent action scenes and profane irreverence; I remember seeing the
trailers and getting the impression that it was a fairly light superhero
comedy. But between Wanted, Kingsmen, and now
Kick-Ass, I’m definitely learning my
way around Mark Millar’s M.O.
Dave
Lizewski is a painfully normal teenage boy who, tired of always being the
coward who doesn’t fight back, takes a page from his favorite comic books and becomes
a masked vigilante. He gets himself a
costume, a pair of fighting batons, and a dial-a-hero-style Myspace page, and
sets out to make a difference in the world.
As the masked Kick-Ass, he takes on thugs and petty criminals, and while
he’s not especially adept at it, he starts a bona fide superhero craze, earning
the adulation of the inspired masses.
Unfortunately, his high profile catches the attention of a crime lord
who doesn’t need a nemesis, and he gets in way over his head – especially when
he connects with Hit-Girl and Big Daddy, a similarly-masked duo who aren’t
messing around.
Mark
Millar, it seems, specializes in show-the-blood stories. I mean, in your average PG-13 superhero
movie, you know that the heroes are taking out the bad guys, and there are fists
and specialized weapons and explosions, but you don’t really see the blood, and
you use words out “beat” or “take out” rather than “kill.” In movies based on Mark Millar’s stories, you
see the blood – the violence is up-close and visceral, and it doesn’t let
up. (For a non-Millar example, think of
the difference between The Lord of the
Rings and Game of Thrones. There’s plenty of fighting and killing in
both, but Game of Thrones is infinitely
more show-the-blood.)
That approach
really works here. In Kick-Ass’s first
forays into heroism, it shows Dave that crime-fighting isn’t a lark; it’s dangerous. These early beatdowns are pretty
standardly-choreographed, but more audacious, highly-stylized stuff comes
later. Hit-Girl in particular is a
larger-than-life lethal figure, made all the more insane by the fact that she’s
only eleven. Her first fight scene is
one of the highlights of the film, and as Dave watches her handily eviscerate a
roomful of tough customers twice her size, he sees just how lamentably unprepared
he is for this job. He never comes out
and says it, but I think he was envisioning something similar to how Spider-Man
handles small-time crooks: beat them up
and then leave them giftwrapped for the cops.
He’s not ready to deal with the thought of actually killing people, of knives and guns and blood, and the movie
addresses this disconnect between vigilantism in theory and in practice.
This
movie features a precognizant Quicksilver reunion, as it stars Aaron
Taylor-Johnson (The Avengers) as Dave and features Evan Peters (X-Men) as one of his friends. I’ve loved Chloë Grace Moretz since Hugo, and she’s all kinds of awesome as
Hit-Girl. Mark Strong is effective as
the main baddie, and Nikita’s Lyndsy
Fonseca is kind of wasted as Dave’s love interest. I honestly don’t know what to make of Nicholas
Cage’s Big Daddy – more than anything, it brings to mind the Community episode where Abed takes the “Nicholas
Cage: Good or Bad?” class.
Warnings
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