Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass is a movie i expected not to like.  Not because of the way the "omg, an 11 year old killing people!" crowd portrayed the film, but because of how everyone else was portraying the film.  It seems we live in an age where shallow, uninteresting characters are considered "cooler" the less human they come off - and nothing's less human than an 11-year-old, cold-blooded killer, regardless of altruistic motives.

Also, it stars Nicolas Cage and nothing with Nicolas Cage is ever "good".

First of all, let's get this elephant out of the room - the issue of HitGirl.  Whether they love her or hate her, it's the only thing anyone who's seen this fucking movie ever talks about: an 11-year-old girl who kills people.  Because the only exposure i had to this movie before seeing it was the media hype, i had the unfortunate position of being between two conflicting and equally stupifying opinions.

From the way the moral guardians talked about it, you might expect some over the top gory blood fest for the sake of shock value.  "An 11 year old girl is killing people!?  Think of the children!"  The way the media presented it, it sounded like HitGirl was going to be engaging in some Tarintino-esque over-the-top fights.  Blood everywhere, bodies littering the floor, gory gory scenes that serve no other purpose than to shock audiences.  You know, the kind of thing many move goers seem to want to see - but not i.  I like violence, but it has to have a point; and, sadly, many of those who try and follow in Tarintino's footsteps fail in this regard.

But more worrying (for me, at least) was the way the fanboys were talking about HitGirl.  "An 11-year-old girl who can and does kick so much ass she's ass-kicking incarnate!  Lulz!"  You would almost expect some kind of personality-less, non-human character in the shell of a body of a little girl who merely roams hallways and kills things, as sadly many of these types of characters end up being.

Fortunately, neither of these sides are right.  What HitGirl is is something in the middle of the outrageously cliched and despicable stereotypes (ass kicking incarnate vs corrupting moral force).  HitGirl's character is no more shocking than it is unrelatable and bland.  She very much is a comic book superheroine who is also just a little girl.  She does what she does because it's what her father has trained her to do and she'd do anything her father would ask of her.  She's even shown to make mistakes and have human connections with those around her.  She just happens to also be a vigilante who kills criminals.

I also expected Hitgirl's fucking swearing to be over the fucking top and gratuitous as all hell in every motherfucking way.  But, shit, if it's actually not all that fucking bad.  Sure, she swears more than all the other cocksucking characters put together, but not to the goddamn extremes of, say, South Park, which seems to take the fucking stance that swearing in and of itself is "shocking" and a fucking laugh riot (it's not - get over it).  Measured use of curse words can add character to otherwise mundane dialogue, while gratuitous swearing just comes off as piss-ass-shitty-cunt silly.  HitGirl's swearing is definitely the former.

But enough about HitGirl, let's talk about the other characters:

Aaron Johnson plays the titular hero of Kick-Ass.  But even though his name's in the title, it seems a mystery why he's the main character.  He's not particularly interesting or inspiring and, despite picking up a few superpowers after losing a fight, his only important ability seems to be to move the plot forward through narration.  He spends a lot of time losing fights and getting his ass saved by everyone else.  His only real "main character" moment comes at the end of the movie when he predictably delivers the final blow to the villain (and nothing else) before opting out of the superhero lifestyle and settling down with his shallow love interest.

Lyndsy Fonseca plays Katie, the shallow love interest.  Really, there's not much to say about her since her character is entirely generic.  She's there to get with the main character at the end of the movie.  Nothing else.

Nicolas Cage plays the batman-esque superhero "Big Daddy" and true to form, his character is bland and uninteresting.  His lines are dry and his personality stilted.  You, as the audience, never get a chance to really identify with him because he's completely unidentifiable with.  His backstory is unimportant and he's barely on camera enough for it to matter.  In other words, another standard Nicolas Cage performance.

There's also the main villain, D'Amico (Mark Strong) and his son, Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), but they have very little personality outside of being "the bad guys".  The son comes close, but he's so flippant in his characterization, it's hard to be sure if he's acting the way he is out of some adherence to a grandeur plot or just because the writers require him to.  There's also some random cop friend of Cage's that shows up for exactly one speaking role before dropping out of importance.

When it comes right down to it, this movie should've more properly been called HitGirl.  She's the one the movie focuses on and she's the one who does the fighting and she's the one that interesting things happen to and she's the one the writers clearly wanted to make this movie about.  Even the reviewers (critics and fanboys alike) talk about her... and nothing else.

In the end, Kick-Ass is a just another superhero movie, plain and simple.  Sure, it tries to distinguish itself from the genre by claiming the protagonists don't have any superpowers and subverting the occassional superhero trope, but it is still a superhero movie and the heroes are exactly what they claim they are not: super powered.  Inhuman ability to feel no pain, bullet dodging, superscience... it's all there in some way, shape or form, but don't expect the movie to acknowledge it, even ironically.

Over all i give this movie, i dunno, a C, C+.  The plots entertaining, but the characters do it no real justice.  There'll probably be a sequel, but i can't imagine it would add anything.