Kick-Ass (2010)



Director : Matthew Vaughn


Dave Lizewski is a pretty normal high school student whose "only super power was being invisible to girls." Then one day he asks his friends ho come no on has ever tried to be a super hero. Periodically local hoodlums take their money and their phones. Chris D'Amico goes to school with thmem and his father is the local crime boss, and he has a bodyguard.

Dave sends away for a costume and the green and yellow superhero Kick-Ass is born, except Dave has no super powers. On the other side of town Damon Macready trains his little girl Mindy. He shoots a gun in to her bullet proof vest.

Dave walks around in his new uniform. When he sees some gang kids breaking in to a car he suits up and gets stabbed in the stomach and then hit by a car. Big Daddy Macready keeps track of the local criminals and tests his daughter on weapons.

Dave's friends start to kid him about being a super hero, but the girl of his dreams, Katie, suddenly takes an interest in him because she thinks he is gay and he goes along with it. Dave starts working out and puts Kick-Ass on MySpace. Outside a convenience store a guy is getting beat up by three others and he steps in. With his batons he fights off the assailants and then the video goes viral. and his MySpace site goes viral too.

Big Daddy and Mindy sees him and so does Chris D'Amico. Dave goes over to see Katie's old boyfriend to let him know their abusive relationship is over. Things look bad and he hits the guy with a taser. For me the scene is both dramatic and laugh out loud funny, which is really hard to do. And in general, the movie continues to do both things well. So often, movies that don't know if they are comedy or drama just doesn't work, but this one does, for me.

Just when it looks like Dave is a goner, Hit-Girl (Mindy) comes to the rescue, and she is super, vulgar and really, really brutal. Her dad also suits up and is Big Daddy. Is it funny? I guess it depends on who is judging it.

Roger Ebert didn't like it too much. In his 1 star review he says: "Shall I have feelings, or should I pretend to be cool? Will I seem hopelessly square if I find “Kick-Ass” morally reprehensible and will I appear to have missed the point? Let's say you're a big fan of the original comic book, and you think the movie does it justice. You know what? You inhabit a world I am so very not interested in. A movie camera makes a record of whatever is placed in front of it, and in this case, it shows deadly carnage dished out by an 11-year-old girl, after which an adult man brutally hammers her to within an inch of her life. Blood everywhere. Now tell me all about the context."

The movie is way, way over the top. It is a black comedy that uses a brutal, foul mouthed little girl as the comedic element. But for me it worked. On IMDB it has a 7.9 rating, so it seems to be popular out there too. Not really a superhero movie, but it is well done so I am going to throw ir in.