Kick-Ass (2010)

After watching Kick-Ass, I left the theatre thinking "That was like Watchmen, but a heck of a lot better." There are a lot of parallels. Both are adapted from comic book source material. The same concept is at the core of both movies: What would a superhero look like in real life? Both are incredibly violent.

I'm not gonna debate whether Watchmen (the comic book) is better than Kick-Ass (the comic book). As much as I love Mark Millar, I'm not prepared to say he beat Alan Moore's magnum opus. Kick-Ass the Movie is a hell of a lot better than Watchmen the Movie. Any criticisms I direct towards either title is directed at the movie version, not the comic book version (even if it might still apply).

In both films, the answer to that central concept is simple: A real-life superhero would look like (and be) an insane person. Pretty much all of the central characters are just crazy, the main character decides to continue being a superhero even after getting knifed and then hit by a car in his first attempt to stop crime. And he's arguably the sanest costumed character in the film. It's probably why he's the protagonist. His associates, Hit-Girl and Big Daddy, are psychopaths, plain and simple. They revel in violence. Especially Hit-Girl. There was a lot of concern about Chloe Moretz's performance as Hit-Girl, because she curses (she says the c-word once. *GASP*) and is a mass-murderer (although, there was less concern over that part). The concern was about using a child actress in that way. I'd argue that the film's own internal discussion over child misuse in roles is far more effective than any of the people who shouted that it was Natalie Portman in Leon the (Professional) all over again (and to be fair, that was a great movie and Portman was fantastic). Moretz turns in one of the better performances of the film.

Like Hit-Girl and Big Daddy, the film also revels in violence. However, since this is Matthew Vaughn directing it instead of Zack Snyder, though it is graphic and an 11-year-old girl gets whooped by Mark Strong (to be fair, that's pretty real-to-life), the violence isn't the only part of this movie that is any good. The first half or so is a tightly told narrative that gets its message across effectively without losing itself in being wowed by the world it had created, unlike Watchmen where it lost itself immediately after the opening credits. That said, by the time the stage is set for the climax, the movie has thrown off all pretensions of staying within the realm of possibility and just goes nuts with the violence. Up until that point, it was fairly consistent in stating that people who deal in violence receive violence back. That might still hold true, actually, as nearly every character (and certainly every major character) who deals in violence is either beaten up or dead by the end of the film.

I don't usually like to assign a value to reviews, because I hope that I've given as fair an assessment as possible and my opinion on how I enjoyed a film has come through, but I sense some ambiguity here. So I'll say that this would get an A-/B+ grade from me. It's not perfect, but it's a damned good film. One of the best superhero movies made is a fair assessment.

Also, just a heads-up to the really heavy duty movie buffs. Besides Mark Strong, look for two other actors from Guy Ritchie's stable to appear in this film: Jason Flemyng and Dexter Fletcher (Fat Tom and Soap from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels). Also, Clark Duke (from Sex Drive, Hot-Tub Time Machine, and "Clark and Michael" is in it).