Holding Out for a Motherf***ing Hero

Now come on, it's a movie called Kick Ass; how subtle do you expect it to be? We've had superhero/graphic novel movies played straight, played satirically, and played as morbid deconstructionist (last year's Watchmen). So what category does this fall into? All of them. Or none of them. When the opening Spider-Man-ish narration involves repeated references to the main character pleasuring himself, who the hell knows?

And that's either Kick Ass's saving grace for the more tolerant, or its curse for just about everyone else. It throws at us gobs of the stuff R-rated movies are typically built on: the F-bomb becomes the F-barrage and every moment of violence escalates out of a comic book "safe" zone into whatever bout of bloody carnage seems inventive for the moment. What's the purpose of this? Is there some subtext here that fighting evil is actually a rough and gritty business where people actually get hurt? Nah, it's too stylized to be that lofty. The simple verdict is that Kick Ass is plenty of madness, but the method apparently skipped town on a bus.

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) wonders why no one really tries to be a super-hero (it's also a set-up for a jaw-dropper of an opening scene) and after he and his pals are mugged by corner hoods, decides to take the law, as it is, into his own hands. He buys a green wetsuit that makes him look like radioactive sperm, dubs himself Kick Ass, and heads out into the mean streets to halt crime in its tracks.

By which we mean, get his butt handed to him with a milkshake and an order of fries.

In a cute and ironic twist, his first beat-down puts him in an even better position to go out and play hero (how, I won't tell) and after he clumsily rescues a victim from a gang beating, becomes an internet and media phenom. Only, he's not the only costumed vigilante act in town. During one close encounter he's rescued by a man in Batman black, an ex-cop with an agenda (Nicholas Cage) and his precocious, and hard-hitting, daughter who calls herself "Hit Girl" (Chloe Moretz). If you've heard of this movie before reading this review you've seen the clips of Moretz, all of eleven, pouring round after round into mobs of bad guys, and if you've seen the red band trailer you've seen her drop the kind of language that would make David Mamet and Robert DeNiro blush. I mention this because, in a way, this is Kick Ass' mojo: it takes what it has and escalates it until it has to get a reaction out of even the most jaded viewer (don't think too hard about how Big Daddy Cage trains his daughter to use a bullet-proof vest). In many cases this would be a sign of desperation. It isn't here, but it's neither a sign of inspiration, either, if only because the movie is often like an ADHD kid without his Ritalin, too in-the-moment to consider the possibility of a "big picture."

The remains of the plot exhibit even more of this nervous woodpecker syndrome. A local crime boss (Mark Strong) mistakes the ill-health (i.e. death) befalling his subordinates to the doings of Kick Ass (in reality, the dynamic father/daughter duo are to blame) and hatches an elaborate scheme to put his heroics to a pulpy end. He even sends his son (Superbad's Chris Mintz-Plasse) out onto the streets as another superhero known as Red Mist (oh, don't tell me they really didn't want to call him McLovin') to lure the unsuspecting do-gooder in.

Kick Ass can be an entertaining ride while it lasts, if you can maintain the same kind of defenses normally reserved for horror movies, the kind that allows you to realize that it is only a movie and kids in it are not getting beaten to a pulp and talking like longshoremen. And there were touches I liked. I liked how Kick Ass becomes a celebrity for doing comparatively little, and I even liked the way Johnson undercuts the moments where he's supposed to be at his most courageous with a squeaky, unsure voice, like he's about to ask the villains if it's okay if he opens up a can of whuppass. I even liked the ending- I had to know what was in the crate, and I wasn't disappointed. B