Rent Kick-Ass (2010)

A film desperate to offend & shock, which just ends up becoming a slave to that single aim - Kick-Ass review by TB

I remember vividly going to see Kick-Ass at the cinema. Coming 2 years after the monumental Dark Knight & when the traction of superhero films was just picking up, it promised to be a fresh & realistic take on the genre, flipping a lot of the expectations on their head. It had also generated considerable coverage/controversy from across the media landscape over its content, in particular the Hit-Girl character's use of profanity & violence. But for me the driving factor seeing it was that I had absolutely loved Layer Cake & would watch anything Matthew Vaughan was involved in.

So I went into the cinema... then came out at the end wishing I hadn't bothered & wanting my money back.

It starts well and asks some genuinely legitimate questions about the fascination people have with superheroes, as well as people who want to imitate them, either to actually help people or just for notoriety. But despite Taylor (now Taylor-Johnson) being an affable, likeable Everyman, very quickly the film becomes what it always wanted to be: a sleazy & in this case quite revolting movie.

Whilst I will talk about Hit-Girl in a second, I have as much a problem with the overall tone as I do with that character. And by tone, I mean that everything seems to have been designed to make you go yuck & wonder what the hell the people in this world are doing. So you have one of the characters putting his daughter in a bulletproof vest & repeatedly shooting her, then being delighted when she asks for guns & knives as birthday presents (this was horrible at the time & rancid today considering how many school shootings there are, alongside the explosion in young people committing violence, whether it is with firearms in the USA or knives in the UK,) and a really lairy, creepy obsession with sex which instead of coming across like The Inbetweeners is more like a dirty old man.

That would be problematic by itself, but then when you put a 12 year old girl as one of the main characters, who commits the lion's share of graphic violence & repeatedly swears, it's a whole new level of repugnance. And the film just keeps pushing & pushing this, as if every time it takes it too far, it's a groundbreaking achievement. At one point, she references a graphic sexual situation as her calling card, as casually as if she is talking about what she had for dinner that evening. And none of it is funny or groundbreaking, it's just disgusting.

And the film just goes on and on like that. There are some well-shot action scenes, hence the 2 star rating, and Nicolas Cage is clearly having the time of his life unashamedly living out his boyhood fantasies. But, by the end you just look at it with the same contempt you would someone who exposed their 12 year old child to graphic sex & had taught them to slaughter multiple people.

Amusingly, there was a high profile fallout from the sequel, when Jim Carrey refused to have anything to do with promoting the film after seeing it's violent content coupled with multiple school shootings. Kinda makes you think, doesn't it...

Simply Great Fun - Kick-Ass review by GI

Kick-Ass was such a refreshing film in 2010 and it remains even more so now we have the plethora of comic-book adaptations and superhero films. I'm becoming a bit tired by the clichéd narratives and the more and more obscure characters that are getting dug up. After the Dark Knight trilogy I thought there can never be anything to compare within the genre but Kick-Ass is the wonderful exception. Dave (Aaron Johnson) is a comic book nerd who one day wonders why no-one has ever thought about becoming a type of superhero, ridiculed by his equally nerdy buddies he buys a daft looking wetsuit and begins to patrol his local streets calling himself Kick Ass. One night he tries to rescue a man being beaten and inadvertently becomes an internet sensation. But he soon finds that there are a couple of other masked vigilantes around who don't like what he's doing and the local crime boss (Mark Strong) is none too happy either. This is a comic book/superhero film that subverts the genre to perfection, it has everything - it's a teen coming-of-age story, an action film, an absolutely hilarious comedy, a violent thriller and much much more. And there's some great characters here too not least the forever wonderful Mark Strong as the evil crime boss, Chloë Grace-Moretz as Hit Girl and what a brave move to have her using the C word, and of course Nicolas Cage doing his Adam West impersonation to such brilliant effect. This is a superb film and it's one that you can sit back and enjoy time and time again not least to spot the little homages and throwbacks to other movies that litter the film throughout. And what a soundtrack too. If you have never seen this then it's a must.