Melbourne Central Hoyts, 13/04/2010
Status: Behinderooni
Warning: I’ve combined two things that normally make for fairly dull reviews (a mediocre film and a bad cold). Lower your expectations accordingly.
NYC highschool kid, Dave (AARON JOHNSON, Nowhere Boy), gets inspired by his comic book superhero heroes and decides to become one himself. One internet-ordered wetsuit and some sit-ups later and he is Kick-Ass, crime fighter.
He quickly gets in over his head when the organized crime bad guy (MARK STRONG, Sherlock Holmes, Stardust) mistakes him for real (and really frightening) vigilantes 11-year old Hit-Girl (CHLOE GRACE MORETZ, 500 Days of Summer) and her father Big Daddy (NICHOLAS CAGE, who has never been better).
Hit-Girl is undeniably the star of this film. There’s something really interesting and repellent about a little girl who shoots and stabs her way through dozens of bad guys. Moretz does very well to portray both ability and vulnerability. Together with Big Daddy (who has a more classic origin story than Kick Ass) she brings the urgency and, it has to be said, stylish fightin, to the film. (I’m still undecided as to what Kick-Ass actually brings apart from annoying, useless voice over).
It’s clear to me that writer JANE GOLDMAN and writer/director MATTHEW VAUGHN (who both worked on Stardust) had a point that they wanted to get across in Kick-Ass. I’m just not exactly sure what that point is. Something about violence and its effect on society? Like maybe it’s a sad indictment that Kick-Ass becomes an internet sensation when he get the bejesus beaten out of him fighting off three guys in a grubby alley while half a dozen people film him on their camera-phones. But then it felt like they said, “okay, you’ve sat through our ‘hmmm’ moment and now you get violence. Lots and lots of highly-stylised, cartoony violence,” which somewhat undermined the point. Not that I didn’t like the fightin, it just felt like they want to have their cake and stab it too.
