“Kick-Ass” is a movie based off the ultra-violent comic series of the same name. The premise of the movie is simple: kid reads comics, kid sees everyday wrongdoings, kid makes logical connection between the two, kid creates a superhero persona to fight crime. The “kid” is none other than your stereotypical comic book geek Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson). The movie opens with a narrative by Dave, about how everyone dreams of becoming a superhero, but nobody had tried it before he had. After the shocking opening scene, the audience is introduced to Dave. He claims to be like most other high school kids and has nothing special about him. To make things even more cliché he has a love interest, Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca,) who never knew he existed before the movie started.
Before Dave dons the bright green suit and takes on the persona of Kick-Ass, most of the screen time is spent setting up an ordinary and boring home life. His discussions revolve around the theory of superheroes and their popularity. If there is one thing the movie makes clear to the audience , it is why Dave decides to become a superhero.
His first time on patrol Dave comes across a pair of “thugs” who he has been mugged by before. He catches them in the middle of stealing a car and tries to stop them. They proceed to fight in a very realistic “nerd takes on two thugs” style. In other words, the fight ends quickly with the use of a knife. He takes this shortfall as a message to train harder before taking to the streets again.
The movie itself swung between several extremes and wasn’t quite sure if it wanted to be funny, shocking or thoughtful. For most of the movie, the plot was nihilistic (postmodern for you literature and media fiends). However, it added a lot of optimistic “silver linings” that felt out of place with the attitude present in the rest of the movie. Mimicking the comic, the movie has a lot of blood and gore. Even though most of it was realistic, it was over the top at times. Even the shocking language of Mindy, a.k.a. “Hit-Girl” (Chloe Moretz), bordered between comical and overdone.
One thing throughout the movie remained consistent though: the action was top-notch. Every fight scene was overflowing with the most extreme moves. Even the first on-screen kill in the movie was done with so much flourish one would think they took a page out of “Kill Bill’s” script. Overall, if you don’t mind a lot of graphic violence and could care less about the “downer” attitude in your movies, this movie is a must-see.