You know, when a guy who makes his trade going on stage and singing songs that can range from teen pregnancy, mass murder and necrophilia to Whigfield and Spice Girls covers comments on the levels of 'adult' content in a film, something must be odd. I left the cinema trying to find a poster with an age rating, just to confirm this was a 15 rated film. Thinking about it compared with other 15s and reading the
BBFC's always excellent views, I can understand why it got that rating, but strewth, I'm sure 15s weren't like that when I was 15. But, let's get one thing straight, I wasn't offended, I was entertained, but it was a little more action than I had expected.

So let's start with the basics. The film is a comic book adaptation (as many outlets have mentioned, the adapter is married to somebody rather famous in the UK). The director is Matthew Vaughn, who is also in the production credits. He, along with another producer, Adam Bohling, were involved in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, so it is no surprise to see small parts for Dexter Fletcher (back with Press-Gang-American accent) and Jason Flemyng (just gloss over the accent).

The film is centred around Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a New York high school nobody who, after wondering why more people want to be Paris Hilton than a superhero, dons a scuba suit to become the masked avenger, Kick-Ass. His first attempts at crime-fighting go badly, with him getting stabbed and hit by a car. He returns with metal plates inside him, some dodgy nerve endings and the whole school thinking he is gay. He carries on with his superhero work, and while chasing a lost cat ends up saving a man from three gang members, while being filmed by a dozen camera-phone wielding onlookers. He becomes the latest Internet phenomenon.

Matters are complicated further when the girl he fancies (Lyndsy Fonseca) adopts him as her gay best friend. To do her a favour, he sets out to confront her ex-boyfriend, who happens to be a drug-goon surrounded by henchmen. Things don't go to plan, and he is rescued by Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), who are busy dismantling a crime boss's (Mark Strong) business.

Big Daddy is avenging being framed for drug dealing by the crime boss, which led to his wife committing suicide. He brainwashed his daughter to be his side kick, producing a lethal mix of martial artist, gun fighter and dirty-mouthed remorseless killer. They are so successful that they get the crime boss worried, and he mistakenly believes Kick-Ass is responsible and orders him dead.

The Boss's son tries to get on his father's good side by inventing a new superhero, Red Mist, and luring Kick-Ass in. He eventually discovers that Kick-Ass is not the only superhero in town and the body count rises.

Let's be fair, this isn't Kick-Ass's film. It belongs to Hit Girl. From the moment she is introduced, being shot by her father, through every scene where she inflicts hideous amounts of pain on random goons, she steals the screen. Perhaps one of the most entertaining parts of it is the amount of violence and swearing they let a 12-year-old girl get away with. Once can only assume that the character is set for a life of counselling in her later years.

Watching Nic Cage for me has never been a rewarding experience. It took me a while to realise that he was actually putting in a comic turn as the spaced-out father.

The official lead actor didn't do much to stand out, it was a generally believable portrayal of a teenage boy, and it was nice to see a lead actor not straight from the 'looks like that guy from Juno' stable that seems to be populating most comedies focusing on geeky teens. On the other hand, Christopher Mintz-Plasse did seem to stumble through the film without adding much to it aside from a strange wig.

Visually and dramatically, the film was a light affair, far away from the brooding superhero of the reinvented Batman films. The action kept coming, as did the laughs and the blood. Perhaps this was an undoing of the film, as the message of how people need to stand up to criminals rather than just look on was partly drowned out by pre-teen girls ripping out throats.

I do expect this film to date quickly. It is very much of its time, with piles of cultural references which all add to the amusement of the viewer. The love story element was pretty one dimensional, as was the love interest's character, but most comic tales have some failing. Perhaps it is because the stories were constructed by men drawn into the world of comics because they didn't understand women.

I went into the film expecting a light-hearted teen hero film and got served up with a whole might more blood and guts than I was expecting, but I enjoyed the experience. It also never felt dragged out. I'm confident that the thought of a young girl waving flick knives around will have certain sections of the media outraged, (I'm also confident that most of the outraged people will have never seen it), but as long as people go into it expecting a fair amount of blood, it will be an enjoyable experience. There is certainly a lot less to object to here than the idea of going to see a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler.

The_Jon_M

05.04.10 Front Page

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