April 27, 2010: Kick-Ass
Kick-Ass generated some controversy, and I was wary because of its comic-book pedigree, but it turned out to be far better than I expected.
A bunch of high school geeks talk about superheroes and why nobody ever actually bothers to become one. When one of them gets into a car crash and has his perspective on the value of life changed (plus some convenient nerve damage reducing the pain he feels when getting beat up), he decides to bite the bullet and create a suit and a character and go out on the streets dispensing vigilante justice. A freak encounter leads to huge publicity and the attention of some local gangsters as well as a secret father-daughter superhero crew who are bent on revenge against the mob boss.
So what’s controversial about all this? Well, the father-daughter team consists of an edgy Nicolas Cage training his 11-year-old daughter in martial arts, weaponry, and combat skills, including shooting her at close-range (in a bullet-proof vest) so that she’ll know what it’s like to be shot and not be taken off guard if it happens for real. The training is effective, as she is a little hellion running roughshod over dozens of thugs at a time when the need strikes, but it can be convincingly argued that the girl is being exploited. The fighting in the film is bloody, deadly and done without remorse. And it’s all dressed up in a comic book style with costumes and the usual themes of good and evil, and people being pushed beyond their typical limits by anger and anonymity.
I thought Kick-Ass made for a high-energy ride, without artificial limits on the territory it could explore. Crazy stunts and weapons are on show and can be used to their full potential. There is humour sprinkled throughout, ranging from the black comedy of the above-mentioned shooting, to sly comments on society and rules, to goofball physical schtick as the superhero Kick-Ass learns his newfound craft. Unchecked profanity lets the gangsters as well as an intense Nicolas Cage cut loose. And the moral arc of the story could take some interesting turns without feeling like it had to be wrapped up in a nice clean way.
I’ve railed against Mark Strong more than once in the past for failing to portray to me a convincingly menacing villain, but here he impressed me for the first time. As the local mob boss, he shows facets of the raging tiger who commands the respect of his tough underlings, the psychopath who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, and the conflicted father who tries to keep his son out of the family business but eventually relents and finds himself proud of his son’s achievements.
Based on a recent comic book series, Kick-Ass is ultraviolent but it’s a deliberately chosen style. The speech cadence of Cage’s Big Daddy is also stylized into what one might imagine from the typical comic book speech bubbles which are liberally sprinkled with emphasized words. Different sections of the film are introduced by comic book captions and titles. And in an almost circular homage to comic book paradigms, Big Daddy has fictionalized his earlier conflict with the mob into a series of comics written for his daughter to explain the death of her mother and why they do what they do, so we occasionally see flashbacks and other scenes freeze-frame and morph into a comic book panel on Cage’s drawing easel.
I’m not generally a fan of comic book adaptations, although recent efforts such as The Dark Knight (2008) have been aimed more at the casual fan like myself so I find myself liking them. Kick-Ass has a much more pure-bred comic book style on the surface, but it can poke fun at itself and goes out of its way to make the format accessible. If you can stand the violence, it’s solid entertainment which might even have a thing or two to say about human nature.
And they set up a sequel.
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