Violent Kick-Ass a Comic Enigma
I have never read the Kick-Ass comic book written by Mark Millar and John S. Romita, Jr. I don’t know what differences there are between it and Stardust and Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn’s cinematic adaptation. What I do know is that this superhero wannabe teenage extravaganza offers up a lot of food for thought, much of it so polarizing that more than a week after seeing it I still haven’t decided what side of the fence I ultimately come down in regards to it.
Chloë Grace Moretz and Mark Strong in Lionsgate's Kick-Ass
Here’s the shorthand version of the story: High School dweeb Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) wonders why no one has actually tried to become a superhero for real a la Batman and decides to do it himself taking up the mantle of a masked avenger named Kick-Ass. While he’s not especially good at it (getting beat to a pulp the first time he tries to stop a crime) thanks to some good video footage he becomes an immediate internet sensation. But things get real when he runs afoul of brutal crime boss Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong), real-life vigilante heroes Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his 12-year-old daughter Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) stepping into the breach to give the untrained wannabe a hand.
Vaughn and Jane Goldman’s (Stardust) attempts to walk a very fine line between realism a Tarantino-esque hyperrealism that allows for things outside the pale yet still can pack an emotional wallop. It bridges a gap between the worlds of Marvel and DC, The Matrix, Superbad, Watchmen and Kill Bill throwing in a giant dollop of Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) and Chan-wook Park (Oldboy) in the process. The film attempts to leap over tall building while at the same time making sure the audience understands just how concrete they really are, the blurring edges so extraordinary keeping up with them is a feat unto itself.
A lot of this I’m perfectly fine with. Like his previous efforts Vaughn is an absolute craftsman who makes energetic entertainments that are crafted with impeccable skill. He pays homage to his influences while at the same time leaving his own indelible mark, each frame a beautiful spellbinder easy to become lost within.
So what’s the problem? There was something about the world that Fukasaku created for Battle Royale that made its subsequent violence both palatable and amazing. More than that, the social critique behind the teen-on-teen bloodletting cut like a knife, and as entertaining as it all was from a purely action-adventure standpoint it was the moral undercurrent that made the film an instant classic.
My issue with Kick-Ass is that I can’t get a handle on the world Vaughn and Goldman have created. This is a reality where becoming a superhero has real consequence, where you can get run over by a car or gutted by carjacking criminal. There are real prices to be paid and real blood spurts when someone gets beat over the head by club, and as cool as it all might seem on the surface the price being paid for heroics might be more then the person behind the mask might be willing to suffer.
And yet Hit-Girl defies all of this. She is a hyperkinetic whirlwind of adrenaline and vitriol, her ability to dispatch her enemies so fierce and ferocious her skills put Jet Li, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis and Angelina Jolie to absolute shame. The character does things that are both amazing and abhorrent, and how a person deals with the character is going to in the end decide how they ultimately feel about the movie in general.
That is my rub. The scenes of Hit-Girl dispensing justice are astonishing. Vaughn directs them superbly and I admit to be mesmerized by each and every one of them, including her freakishly violent confrontation with D'Amico. But I just couldn’t put aside my reservations that this was a 12-year-old responsible for all the mayhem, that her father had transformed her into a mass-murdering sociopath and that he was perfectly happy with that. It made me so beyond comfortable I was taken completely out of the movie, and even though my jaw was hitting the floor my heart was heavy with an unease I hadn’t felt sitting in a theatre in quite some time.
There is a chance this could be the superhero equivalent of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Both tend to revel in their insane depravity, almost saluting the immorality the lead characters wallow in. But Kubrick had a way to give it all a gravitas and meaning that sticks to your guts and refuses to let you off easy, the director making the viewer deal with their issues long after the curtain closes.
I’m not sure Vaughn has anything close to a similar goal in mind. The way Kick-Ass resolves feels more suited for an early John Hughes comedy than it does for anything else, and I kept waiting for someone, anyone, inside the narrative to even offhandedly admit the chaos they’d been apart of was beyond abhorrent.
Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill? Maybe, but I don’t really think so. For all the film’s many plusses the fact it raises these questions and then to my mind doesn’t do anything of merit with them is a thing I just can’t get past. This movie made me feel old and out of touch in a way I can’t quite describe, and while I can’t imagine that was Vaughn’s ultimate goal if it was to say he succeeded would be super-powered understatement.
Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)
