Kick-Ass

As I quietly made my way into the theatre, knowing full well I was going alone to a movie based off of a comic book that only hardcore comic enthusiasts have heard about, I couldn’t help but feeling extremely torn about this movie. On the one hand I had Roger Ebert’s review trashing Kick-Ass swirling around my head and on the other all of my friend’s positive reviews of the film.

Kick-Ass follows the life of high school loser Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) who, after reading too many comics and getting mugged one too many times, wonders why no one has ever donned a superhero costume and fought bad guys. To which his friends reply, “Because you’d get your ass kicked.”

Dave ignores his friend’s words of wisdom and orders himself a superhero costume that makes him look like a teenage mutant ninja turtle without a shell. He sets out to fight crime, gets promptly stabbed and hit by a car. His injuries were fixed with metal plates and left his nerve endings so shot that his ability to feel pain is almost gone. He starts to actually have success as a superhero and becomes a New York City phenomenon.

In his travels he encounters Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz), a knife-wielding, fun sized hero trained to kill people by exactly the kind of person you would expect to teach an 11-year-old girl that sort of thing. Yes, I am talking about Nicholas Cage, who takes on the role of Big Daddy, who is 20% Batman and 250% Punisher. Together they are out to stop crime boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong).

With a title as subtle as “Kick-Ass,” the audience is expecting at least one thing: there better be some ass kicking. Kick-Ass has some pretty good action sequences, all shot in a comic book style that is easily recognizable and isn’t vomit inducing. There is no shaky camera running around the scene like a squirrel with epilepsy. And the climactic end battle is epically brutal and deliciously satisfying.

That said, Kick-Ass is a little long and every scene needs to be rescued from its main character. Mostly by the likes of Clark Duke (Hot Tub Time Machine), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Fogel from Superbad), and even Nicholas Cage, who is surprisingly not annoying and works well within the film.

The main problem with Kick-Ass is that it doesn’t really know what it is. Is it a satire of superhero films? Is it supposed to be serious? If so, how should I react to an 11-year-old girl killing everyone in sight? And, how hard can it be to be a superhero if you have more guns than the U.S. Army?

I expect that all the people that were going to see Kick-Ass already have, but if you are looking for mindless fun that delivers exactly what you’d expect, give Kick-Ass a try.

2 and a half out of four stars

-Christopher O’Connell