Kick-Ass Review

Kick-Ass faced some controversy upon its release Friday, April 16. Much of this was related to the violence of the film and, in particular, the violence committed by one of the film's protagonists, Hit Girl. Specifically, Roger Ebert found the violence committed by and against this character, an 11-year old girl, to be morally reprehensible. This was followed by inevitable backlash that he doesn't "get it" or is simply old and out of touch. Harry Knowles chimed in more or less to that effect. Ultimately, that's unfair. Ebert is right. The violence is morally wrong. It is disturbing. It is, however, appropriate to the film and the film's underlying criticism of the super-hero sub-genre.

Kick-Ass is a black comedy. A very black comedy. It explores what would happen if a young man, Dave played by an awkwardly likable Aaron Johnson, decides to try what he's seen in comic books for his entire life. That's not completely ridiculous. Many a comic book fan has pondered what a real super-hero in the real world might be like. With the increasing prevalence of the genre over the last 80 years it's not really that bizarre a premise. The film starts out light but with a dark gallows humor undercurrent that quickly overtakes the film by the second act. Dave's first attempt to stop a crime in his Kick-Ass guise is very quickly and very violently cut short.

Dave is soon joined by the Batman and Robin analogs Big Daddy, played by Nicholas Cage, and Hit Girl, played by Chloe Grace Moretz. These two are clearly better trained and more experienced than Kick-Ass, and proceed to save him from certain death at the hands of drug dealers. With the introduction of Big Daddy and Hit Girl, how the film will climax with the primary antagonist, Frank, played by Sherlock Holmes' Mark Strong, becomes clear. Kick-Ass is about to be dragged unknowingly into the larger fight between Big Daddy and Frank. The film builds from here to a climax that is perhaps best described as an orgy of death and violence rivaled only by Kill Bill Vol. 1 in mainstream American cinema.

This climax is where the film becomes problematic for people like Ebert; not that the film is devoid of death and violence before the climax. The climax takes what is only hinted at throughout the film and pushes it almost as far as it will go. It's not wrong to criticize the film for this violence. It's very bloody and, upon reflection, disturbing. Whether committed by an 11 year old girl or a 45 year old man this level of violence should bother you on some level.

I quite enjoyed the film myself. I am perhaps desensitized to film violence and maybe that has something to do with it. Ultimately I felt it was a well-structured film. The film is slow in the first act and has a throwaway love interest built through the second act. It doesn't really earn a lot of its relationships. The love interest just conveniently falls into place as an almost afterthought, serving the plot once and then just wasting screen time. The quick trust formed between Kick-Ass and Christopher Mintz-Plasse's Red Mist seems too convenient. Still, the film remains overall satisfying. It succeeded in being well-plotted enough that I didn't know exactly what was coming next, which was quite welcome.

Where the film succeeds in particular, and this is where the violence of the film becomes appropriate for its subject matter, is its criticism of the super-hero sub-genre. Very simply, the film's heros are analogous to specific long running, popular characters.

Kick-Ass is Spider-Man. The film makes this obvious not just through Dave as the Peter Parker-like bespectacled High School nerd becoming a superhero, but also through mirroring Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man film in the first act. Dave's voice-over explaining himself and his world was very much like the one from Peter Parker in Raimi's film. He trains in alleys and practices jumping from roof to roof. Later, he directly compares his situation to Spider-Man and Peter Parker. Just in case you didn't get it. Similar to Spider-Man, Kick-Ass gets beaten up a lot. As Dave and as Kick-Ass he's a kind of bumbling target for every violent misanthrope who comes along. The difference between Spider-Man and Kick-Ass is that Kick-Ass feels the real consequences of this violence on his person. After his first spectacular failure as a super-hero he end up in the hospital for weeks.

Big Daddy and Hit Girl are perhaps the most interesting critique of the genre in the film. The long-time trope of the comic book genre is the kid sidekick. Captain America had Bucky and Batman has Robin. Big Daddy and Hit Girl are a serious critique of Batman and Robin. If you take your time and genuinely consider the relationship between the more than 70 year old characters of Batman and Robin, the only real conclusion that a reasonable person can come to is that it is a fundamentally abusive and dangerous relationship. Putting aside the tired homophobic jokes about the characters there's something genuinely disturbing about them. Batman is a damaged person who adopts a young boy--Robin is traditionally between about 11 and 15 years of age--and teaches him that he needs to go out into the world in tights and beat up criminals. Big Daddy and Hit Girl are presented in this way and the word brain-washing comes up in the context of his relationship to his daughter. It's not an unfair point. Theirs is clearly a relationship built around the obsession of Big Daddy. These are not normal well-adjusted people, nor are they presented as such. They are disturbed and their relationship is disturbing in much the same way as the Batman and Robin relationship is under any serious scrutiny.

Big Daddy and Hit Girl work primarily because of Chloe Grace Moretz's charm and Nicholas Cage's genuinely impressive performance. Nic Cage turns in a disturbingly funny performance as a damaged man who has brain-washed his daughter into being a killer. He's so much more subtle than I'm used to seeing him in recent roles that I forgot he was in the movie at times. In addition, to hammer home the Batman and Robin analogy, Cage does an excellent Adam West impression when he is in his Batman inspired Big Daddy costume. I was surprised he didn't utter the phrase "old chum."

As a long time fan of the super hero sub-genre, I appreciated the critical eye this film offered while remaining entertaining. The film's pace slows at times and there are some throwaway moments, but it remains a solid well-acted film with an engaging plot.