Slick’s Nit-Picks: Kick-Ass

Oh no, here we go with another comic book movie. Wait a minute, it’s not about any estab­lished Mar­vel or DC char­ac­ter and it is not a remake (about the first no-remake this year); maybe this one has hope. In fact, it has way more than hope—Kick-Ass does exactly what its title sug­gests. The premise is beyond sim­ple: just about every kid pre­tended to be a super­hero as a kid and plenty of adults wish they could do some­thing about the things they see on the news and in the streets. Kick-Ass is about an ordi­nary high school kid who has no spe­cial pow­ers and has no money for cool Bat­man gad­gets who decides to make a dif­fer­ence. By him­self he is not going to accom­plish much and he real­ized that: enter Red Mist, Big Daddy and Hit Girl, who round out our cast of vig­i­lantes. Obvi­ously I am going to tell you why, but you need to see this flick. You shouldn’t even be read­ing this…you should be out watch­ing this movie—go…NOW!

I have seen a lot of action movies and it’s crazy how in a way, Kick-Ass just mocks them all. Appar­ently you do not need a bunch of spe­cial effects and bul­let time slow­down and fly­ing across the screen. All you need is a cast of actors that can prop­erly fill your roles, a lit­tle wire­work and some good old ultra-violence. Kick-Ass deliv­ers in spades on all fronts. Aaron John­son brings to life the char­ac­ter of Dave Lizewski (Kick-Ass) like no one else I could think of. He’s tall and goofy but not so goofy that you could not imag­ine him beat­ing the snot out of some­one. Nicholas Cage is Damon Macready (Big Daddy) and this was an impres­sive role for him. He really played thee peo­ple here: he was a lov­ing father who has a lot of men­tal issues, an anti­hero who has a vicious­ness that looked like a cross between Bat­man and Wolver­ine in berserker rage and a man on a mis­sion (not gonna spoil). Even though the mis­sion is what makes him into the anti­hero, i found there to be a dis­tinct dif­fer­ence between the two. Enter Chloe Moretz who plays Mindy Macready (bet­ter known as Hit Girl). She kinda steals the movie as she does more than any­one else in the movie… and damn, does she do it well. She is so excel­lent because she does not even have to snap like some of the other char­ac­ters. She can smile in your face and be this sweet and inno­cent look­ing girl and hand you your ass all in the same breath; eas­ily she was my favorite char­ac­ter in the movie. Last but not least we have Christo­pher Mintz-Plasse, who plays Chris D’Amico (aka McLov….I meant Red Mist). I do not want to say much about him at all because he is pretty inte­gral to the plot. All I can say is that he has come a long way since Super­bad. The fact that you are still read­ing this, you bet­ter tell me that you have seen the movie already.

The basis of the story is that sim­ple and like I said, I do not want to spoil for any­one who has ot seen it so I’m done with the con­vinc­ing. Here I am going to add a lit­tle bit of news which I find dis­turb­ing. Right before I wrote this review I was out hav­ing din­ner with Akuma and some friends and I said “I hope with this movie being rated R it does not have the issues that Watch­men did.” No sooner do I come home than I find an arti­cle on IMDB titled “‘Kick-Ass’ under­whelms;” as the movie grossed only about 8 mil­lion on it’s open­ing day. The major­ity of the char­ac­ters por­trayed are under 18 years old and so it might “look” like a kids’ movie.  Then there are the few peo­ple that pay atten­tion and see a lit­tle girl twirling a but­ter­fly knife and shoot­ing peo­ple and they don’t take their kids to see this. Despite these prob­lems, I believe this movie will make and sur­pass its budget.

Before open­ing day there were already talks of a sequel to Kick-Ass; appar­ently the early screen­ings were very well received. I hope said sequel will not get watered down to make the movie ‘more view­able.’ It was def­i­nitely weird to go see a movie the day after it opened and be in a the­atre that was almost empty. I have con­versed with many who have seen the movie and so far only one per­son did not like it, his main gripe being it did not exactly fol­low the source mate­r­ial. The truth is that Kick-Ass was not a bril­liantly writ­ten story and with the excep­tion of Red Mist, every other char­ac­ter, cos­tumed or not, was pretty sin­gle minded. The bot­tom line is the movie was fun and it did not drag. It did what it had to and boom; it’s over. Con­sid­er­ing the abysmal films that have been com­ing out lately, more movies should fol­low this model.

Handel

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