How to open a can of whoop-ass
There’s an intriguing premise percolating through Kick-Ass, Matthew Vaughn’s hyperkinetic summer flick based on a graphic novel by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., something about all of us wanting to be superheroes, trying to get instantly noticed in a world that magnifies everything via the Internet.
Witness high school dweeb Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) getting tormented in the cafeteria, mugged on his way home every day. No wonder he orders a superhero costume through the Internet and starts calling himself “Kick-Ass.” Watch Dave practice his superhero moves in front of a mirror, very much like Travis Bickle doing his “You talking’ to me?” routine in Taxi Driver.
Watch Dave go out and look for trouble — he finds it, his martial arts sticks and synthetic jumpsuit no match against a mugger’s blade and a speeding truck. He ends up in the hospital, but is soon released, his nerve endings shot: all the better to feel no pain.
Somewhere amid all the human shredding, Kick-Ass explores a whole subtextural level about how delusional superhero types are, in comic books and in real life. But mercifully, such weighty philosophical matters get buried in a blur of ass-whooping. Across town, another pissed-off, disenfranchised couple of would-be superheroes are at it: Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) is training his daughter, known as Hit-Girl (the outstanding Chloë Moretz), to take a few live rounds in the chest. Good thing she’s wearing a Kevlar vest at the time. Still, it’s the kind of thing in movies I shudder to imagine anyone trying at home. Yes, people are that stupid and impressionable.
Despite the real dangers out there (in this case, a relentless mob boss/construction mogul named Frank D’Amico, played by Mark Strong), Dave, Big Daddy and Hit-Girl keep getting back on the crime-fighting horse, hitting the streets each night, kicking butts and taking names. For Dave, it’s a way to get noticed — maybe even laid, though his would-be partner, Katie (Lynsey Fonseca) thinks of him only as her gay BFF. For Big Daddy and Hit-Girl, it’s personal: Cage has created a perfect killing machine in 11-year-old form, a bad-ass ninja who tosses around sailor language as easily as she tosses a balisong knife. (Yes, the Filipino butterfly blade gets name-checked in Kick-Ass.)
Dave’s exploits in a diner parking lot — he protects a victim against three attackers, oblivious to blows thanks to his nerve damage — get videoed by unhelpful onlookers and posted on YouTube. The legend of “Kick-Ass” is born.
Vaughn’s take on the grittier graphic novel is full of surprises. It’s assumed that Aaron Johnson’s resemblance to Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker is an in-joke; he’s the dweebier counterpart to the Spider-Man franchise, while Cage’s Big Daddy adopts the… halting speech patterns of… Adam West in the 1960s Batman TV show. Will the young ‘uns get the reference? Doesn’t matter, there are plenty more to go around. On the soundtrack, the first virulent ass-whipping takes place amid The Dickies’ delirious punk-rock-on-helium version of the Banana Splits theme song. Later, Dave squares off — online — against Red Mist, a competing homegrown superhero, as Sparks’ geek-rock song This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us plays in the background. And there’s a cathartic moment when Dave shows up outside a glass tower office window in a jetpack armed with Gatling guns: Elvis Presley sings An American Trilogy, the Vegas crowd roaring as Kick-Ass mows down a lineup of villains. Oh, yes, there’s also new music by some bands called The Pretty Reckless and MIKA, primarily for demographic purposes, one supposes.
The figure of Hit-Girl has stirred up some controversy. Those who remember Linda Blair’s transformation from sweet little Regan to vile-spewing demon in 1973’s The Exorcist may also recall the public outrage, the hand-wringing and mouth-frothing over the decline of values engendered by this little girl’s potty mouth. Here, Hit-Girl’s slicing and dicing of bad guys is handily overlooked by the hand-wringing brigade; it’s her darned cursing that’s a problem. (Interestingly, Moretz also played a potty mouth in 500 Days of Summer.) I actually expected more expletives, though she uses some choice ones.
We probably have Quentin Tarantino’s GoGo from Kill Bill to thank for the vision of an assassin in schoolgirl uniform. That movie was unapologetic in its graphic gore, borrowing its energy from the manga violence that Kick-Ass also feeds upon. But there’s something oddly kinky about the Hit-Girl outfit, too, a clear nod to Batman’s “partner” Robin, himself oddly androgynous behind the mask and cape.
But as I said, it was the moment where Big Daddy shoots Hit-Girl in the chest three times to “toughen her up” that disturbed me the most, much more than the comic violence that has become a staple of superhero movies (though admittedly, bloodier and more violent here). It was also the opening shot of a deluded individual wearing a cape leaping off a skyscraper — to his immediate, sickening death — that made me worry a little bit about the cultural impact of Kick-Ass. Didn’t they try to ban Fight Club a decade ago because of people copycatting the movie? Here, there’s a whole slew of “don’t try this at home” moments. And in an age where people will — literally — do anything to get noticed by the world, it’s odd that we haven’t seen a lot of questionable YouTube moments inspired by Kick-Ass yet. Though the summer’s still early yet.
Ultimately, Vaughn’s movie retains some of the thought-provoking ideas of the original graphic novel, even adding some of its own. But it’s still a popcorn movie through and through. Like a lot of movies (Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven comes to mind) that pretend to point out the ickiness of violence while actually celebrating its onscreen coolness, Kick-Ass has its bloody cake and eats it too, even introducing D’Amico’s son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, McLovin’ from Superbad) as the avenging scion for a hinted-at sequel. Oh, will superhero franchises never cease spawning?
