Review – Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass, based on the comic book series by Mark Millar and directed by the brilliant Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Stardust), hit cinemas on Friday 26th March across the UK.

It tells the story of Dave Lizewski, an average uninteresting high school student, who is invisible to girls and spends his free time either with his friends in their local comic book store or at home pleasuring himself.

With no reasons other than “Why not?” and “Someone should do it”, Dave decides to become Kick-Ass, the world’s first superhero.  Armed with two batons and no powers, Dave soon becomes an internet sensation when his “heroic” acts are published online causing him to catch the attention of the real superheroes in his hometown and of course, the villains.

As a person that doesn’t read comic books or graphic novels, I was concerned that I might get a little lost with Kick-Ass, much like Watchmen, which left me wondering just what the hell I was watching.  Fortunately, you don’t need to have even heard of Kick-Ass before buying your ticket in order to love this film.  It is an absolute blast! A simple, brilliant story filled with colourful and bizarre characters that I couldn’t help but love.  What is there not to love about an 11 year old girl, with an affinity for butterfly knives, who can beat the crap out of a corridor full of armed men?  There’s no heat vision in this, no flight, no super strength, no shape-shifting, just raw unadulterated violence.

The great thing about Kick-Ass is that I had no idea what it was really about until I watched it.  Trailers are sometimes known to blindside you, and these ones really did.  I was expecting a movie about a have-a-go vigilante and his escapades and personal hurdles, but without ruining the movie for you, Kick-Ass himself is one very small part of a much greater story.  The movie literally switches from one story to a completely different one yet it works, and it works very well.

The humour of Kick-Ass is just fantastic.  A dry, British approach to the laughs stops the movie from getting anywhere near the realms of a superhero spoof and had me laughing out loud in the cinema.  There is one particular scene when one of Kick-Ass’ friends first sees Hit Girl that I am still laughing about now, it’s just brilliant.  It’s great to see Nicolas Cage doing something other than crap action movies, or ridiculous apocalypse films.  He takes to his role as Big Daddy very well and provides a lot of the laughs.  I’m hoping he sees where his skills lie and he becomes a bit more selective over his scripts.  As for Christopher Mintz-Plasse, he has really changed since Mclovin in Superbad.  Again, he is very very funny, but more notably he plays a role I certainly did not expect him to and I think it suits him.  I don’t want to say too much as It is much better to go and see the film without knowing the finer details, you’ll enjoy it so much more.  Sufficed to say, everyone in Kick-Ass is brilliant.

Matthew Vaughn, who should have another “a” in his name in my opinion, is a skilled story teller.  Having previously adapted a Neil Gaiman book to the big screen in the form of “Stardust”, Kick-Ass is yet another hit to add to his portfolio.  He clearly has a love of stories of intertwining journeys and incredible characters and it shines through in quality of this movie.  Whether intentional or not I don’t know but there are some huge moments of similarity between Kick-Ass and the inspirational styles of other movies.  It is very easy to compare parts of the movie to Spiderman, and surprisingly Kill Bill as well, which works in it’s favour, it really does.

Before the release, issues were raised about how appropriate it is to have an 11 year old girl using quite obscene language in Kick-Ass.  I wouldn’t worry about it.  Yes, Hit Girl swears and yes, it could be considered obscene, but it’s really nothing.  It isn’t all the time and it has more comedy value than shock.  I just loved the whole thing and everything about it.  I’m struggling to criticise any of it, perhaps it could be more funny that it already is?  This one gets 5 green wetsuits out of 5 from me!