KICK-ASS

With No Power

Comes No Responsibility

Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Starring Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Aaron Johnson, Nicholas Cage, Chloe Moretz

Film goers may know Mark Millar from last year’s Wanted and most may wish to forget that experience. But the dude knows comics; he has penned many of the recent Marvel Comics smash hits and has been credited for helping plan the template for the next few years of Marvel Studios projects. So it’s no surprise that his 2008 comic Kick-Ass had the movie rights sold to it before the first issue had even printed. And it’s also no surprise that this movie, like the comics, is just downright awesome.

Aaron Johnson plays Dave Lizewski, a lower rung high school student unnoticed by his peers and his crush. A major comic book fan, he one day decides to just do it and become a superhero. And why not? Well the opening scene shows why not - super powers just don’t exist.

Dave reasons that to be a hero he just has to stand up where others won’t, help someone in need and not just look the other way. So, ordering a bunch of supplies online (namely a green wetsuit and batons), Dave sets out on the streets under the moniker Kick-Ass. But on his first attempt at doing the right thing he gets the cold hard reality of a knife in his guts and the front bumper of a car to his face. After months in recovery he is left with damaged nerves that let him take a beating without feeling it and almost as much metal attached to his bones as Wolverine. This is where its ethos of ‘no powers’ starts to wane, in the comics he had no powers at all, but in the movie’s case his damaged nerves give him a power of sorts, not really necessary and only there to ease the idea of this guy taking lots of beatings into the minds of the average movie watcher.

Trying to forget being a hero, Dave goes back to being nobody. But after a few introspective scenes he is out again, Kick-Ass 2.0. Saving a man from a beating in front of a diner of people with camera phones, Kick-Ass becomes a youtube sensation - the first real superhero. As Dave’s alter ego grows in popularity (ie: thousands of Myspace friends and millions of Youtube hits), he starts to get used to the life and even starts seeing his high school crush. On a mission for his crush, Kick-Ass bites off more than he can chew.

With guns pointed at his face, Dave is rescued by the real heroes of the movie, Big Daddy (Nic Cage) and Hit Girl. Chloe Moretz is just flat out amazing as the 10 year old Hit Girl - a girl brought up by a father looking only for vengeance. Home schooling her in firearms and how to take a bullet to the chest, the dynamic between these two characters makes for some hilarious scenes. Kick-Ass gets caught up in the middle of the blood feud between Big Daddy and villian of the piece Frank D’Amico, forcing him to step up or step out.

Without a doubt, Kick-Ass, in comic and movie form, is all about fan service. It is self referential, takes jabs at the comic industry and panders to the ultimate comic book fan's fantasy - being a superhero themselves (and fucking their high school crush behind the cinema). Fans of the comic will notice alterations to the characters and some slight plot changes, but on the whole it is very faithful to the source material. Not quite the almost obsessive shot for shot Sin City but much more faithful than Wanted. More slapstick has been brought into the characters, especially Chris ‘McLovin’ Mintz-Plasse’s alter ego, Red Mist. But that’s not to say the gore has been toned down. Scenes with Hit Girl remain blood filled and remind you this is not your daddy’s Spiderman, although some of the high school scenes may make it feel that way.

Strikingly a perfect balance of comic book geek culture and mainstream appeal, this is one adaptation that should please all of its fans and hopefully the start of a new franchise.

_TOM VARIAN