I must admit, the first few words out of Aaron Johnson's mouth irritated me. Not what he said, but the way his voice strained to a high pitch between his pillowy pink lips. It reminded me of play-doh squeezing through a spaghetti strainer. Quite girly (a conscious decision, obviously). Then twenty minutes went by and I forgot about it. There was dazzling cinematic history blinding me instead.
There are no spoilers here, I promise: I am quite impressed and surprised by Dave's (Kick Ass kid) honest justification as to why he wears a green scuba suit equipped with two latch-on baton-hit-sticks (as I call them) on his back. He does not scowl the city looking for wrongdoing or impish fun or because he's bored or to impress anyone, it is merely because the kid has realized he and the rest of the world would much rather stand by safely while someone gets mugged than jump in and help. And he does not want that to be an owning characteristic any longer. He wants to be that one guy that actually gets the job done, even if he risks getting laughed at. Bravo, sir. "Like all serial killers know, eventually fantasizing just doesn't do it for you anymore." Right on.
His first close-contact with a superhero act does not go as planned. It gets him in the hospital, as it should, where half the bones in his body are replaced with metal ones and some nerve endings are shot to hell. But he's back at school a few weeks later regardless.
His second attempt back on the job has small intentions. He leisurely strolls the streets in full scuba get-up looking for a lost cat named "Mr. Bitey," asking pedestrians if they'd seen the feline. An innocent cat hunt eventually sends him face-first into the type of crime he was actually planning on fighting against to begin with in the parking lot of a shady diner. Three gangster assholes beating the living daylights out of one unarmed sorry fellow. Bring on the green batons. An enthusiastic Asian boy in the diner sees this (clustermuck of what is now two against three) and starts filming on his cell phone. Who is he? "I'm Kick-Ass!" he tells the boy. Huzzah!
The video winds up on YouTube (shocking) and is the most-viewed video on the Internet. Kick-Ass gets nationwide coverage on the news with nary a hair of arrogant ego atop his head. He is humbled.
Enter Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Now let me be the first to announce: Welcome back to the conversation, Nicolas Cage! The man was born to play the father and sidekick of his potty-mouthed, knife-skilled daughter, played to the extreme by 12-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz. I'm pretty sure her first fight scene introduction caused a few mother's jaws to drop at the sight of a small girl saying the C-word with intelligence and purpose (but rightfully so, I might add). It sent the audience in a victorious uproar, what a football stadium would sound like after a touchdown. Bad-assery accomplished. And then some.
I honestly think there is not one, but several climaxes in this film towards the end. Kick-Ass's duties continue to build in importance and tension and obligation once Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) comes willingly to his side, but not for the right reasons. I must award Christopher in his first role as a guy I want to have raped in prison for his conniving ways to help his drug lord father get a hold of Kick-Ass so he can literally execute him on live television. The bad guy of all bad guys is convinced Kick-Ass killed half his fleet of men and attempts to stage him into a trap with his son's help as Red Mist. That anger isn't just you, it's the hate-o-meter rising.
I must warn you, there is a substantial amount of fat, juicy gore and eeriness enough to satisfy your movie violence needs. It even goes into overkill to the point where I had to look off screen at some points. My bellybutton actually sank backwards. I was saturated with, Oh, God, please no... ugh... just-just stop. Plenty of realistic looking war wounds and bruises to make you wince with sympathetic pain. You can actually feel your cheeks buzzing with every brass-knuckled punch to the face. But, hey, I mean, if that's your thing....
On another note, the overall soundtrack is perfection. I immediately bought the thing on iTunes the moment I returned home. It's hard guitar melodies mixed with synths and drums and the perfect escalations here and there to get your heart swelling ten times its size.
I give this movie a solid "Eff yeah!" and would indeed compare it to other marvelous comic book films like The Dark Knight (yeah, I said it). I invite you to enter into the amazingly operatic world of Kick-Ass without an ounce of regret.
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