7: KICK-ASS

The great achievement of Matthew Vaughn’s take on the comic movie is his handling of tone. A film acknowledging the immediate preposterousness of actually being a superhero in the real world, rather than the comic book one is at turns hilarious and darkly troubling. The fact that neither the darkness of its story or its humour overwhelm one another is a real tribute to the handling of a film that in many filmmakers’ hands would have been a mess. In fact, it is a joy.

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnston) takes the plunge into being a superhero, albeit one without any powers, training or intelligence – his actions are a consistent source of humour although throughout Dave’s crime fighting saga we as an audience can also acknowledge the sheer lunacy of it. Dave wants to do the right thing but to do so essentially means having the living hell beaten out of him. For every punch Dave (i.e. Kick-Ass) takes it is funny. Never once is his world transformed by some formative act. Kick-Ass throughout is a terrible crime fighter, his popularity and infamy boosted by the internet and MySpace, rather than any discernible act of heroism.

Vaughn’s acknowledgement that Kick-Ass could be killed at any moment takes the form of every blow having a genuine impact. Punches are felt. Blood is spilled. Bones are indeed broken. In the toughest scene in the film, or any this year, an internet webcast no less, shows that no matter how prepared you are, or aren’t, if the odds are against you – you will almost certainly die. It is this sequence that is the most terrifying, and Vaughn deserves all the plaudits in the world for presenting us with a scene that does not shy away from the real dangers that come with doing the right thing, whether it be in spandex or not.

Likewise, a lot has been written about Chloe Moretz’s Hit Girl. The character being considered an emblem of bad taste, the childishness that comes with comic books, and the sheer disgrace at subjecting a child to acts of violence and foul language. It should be noted in a Ken Loach film featuring a child that swears and commits acts of violence would almost certainly be applauded for its harsh realism. It could be argued that Hit-Girl is merely a product of a deranged man (Nicholas Cage’s Big Daddy) who has taken away a child’s innocence. She is a child without a childhood or any understanding of the world girls her age are meant to be experiencing.

So while the subtext is there, it should also be said that Kick-Ass is actually a whole lot of fun and filled with in-jokes to the genre it derides, reinvents and worships. Music cues reference the films gone before it. Several action sequences are interspersed with other media forms (cell phones, security cameras, polaroids) or stylistic traits so unlikely in the medium. Long takes, POV mark the film’s action sequences out as something special, in spite of the obvious budget restrictions. There are no flipped trucks in this film. The jokes are also brilliantly inspired, sometimes just rude, other times directly referencing comic books and their ridiculous concepts. The fact that the film also has a horrifically dark streak of humour running through it, does nothing but add to the enjoyment of the film. A faux assassination, a superhero’s first flight, a car accident, a gay best friend – all appear in Kick-Ass and about as dark as joke as you are likely to find in a film this year.