Kick-Ass: Sound and Fury, Signifying Something...Almost

Ebert is right: Kick-Ass is morally reprehensible. The part he missed is the bit where that’s the entire point.

Director Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of the Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. ultra-violent comic book is a faithful recreation of the source material, with a few Hollywood touch ups to enhance the adolescent power fantasy. We view this world through the lens of dweeby Dan Lizewski (Aaron Thomas), unremarkable within even the geekiest of circles. Dissatisfied with both his day-to-day life and the injustice of an apathetic world, Dan creates a superhero alter-ego: the eponymous Kick-Ass. He is the world’s first superhero, though he’s not very good at it. In perhaps the film’s most shocking moment (if only because things haven’t gone off the rails quite yet), his first outing ends extremely poorly. But as with every good origin story, it also gives him the secret source of his hidden power: the ability to withstand a higher threshold of pain, meaning he can taking a beating and keep on fighting back. Before too long he finds himself in league with other heroes, realizing that the reason no one ever became a superhero before is because anyone who tried probably wouldn’t last too long.

Kick-Ass, both the comic and now the film, strikes a very strange middle ground. In one moment, it is a knowing smirk and wink about how superhero stories are inherently sex-and-violence fueled escapism for our most juvenile impulses, and how reality is often far less charitable or exciting. The next moment, it completely indulges in those same middle school urges for bloodshed and two-fisted (or in this case, two-handgun) justice, hot chicks and cool one-liners. At one point, Kick-Ass gets pepper sprayed for sneaking into the window of his dream girl; two minutes later, they’re sucking face. While you wait for the other shoe to drop and the dream sequence to end, the movie barrels along as if this is entirely normal behavior for two sane human beings. Kick-Ass himself describes the mindset of a superhero to be “a perfect balance of optimism and naiveté.” It is a philosophy that the movie occasionally flirts with early on, but has a slight sense of restraint that always pulls it back to Earth eventually. Once the third act arrives, it has become completely committed to the tropes of a big-explosion action story, those same clichés it was originally snickering at for being so childishly idealistic.

The other part of the disconnect is that while the character of Kick-Ass is a moderately believable (albeit extremely lucky) vision of what a real-world superhero might be like, other participants within the same film feel completely disconnected from his or any other honest reality. This is sadistic crime-boss Frank D’Armico (Mark Strong) and his gang of thugs that all talk and gesture in such a way to make the Sopranos feel blessedly restrained. At one point, they interrogate someone by sticking him in a large microwave and turning it on. It ends as poorly as you might imagine. There is Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage, who is having a TON of fun,) essentially the Punisher dressed up like Batman, and Hit Girl (adorable Chloe Moretz,) his 11-year-old daughter trained to be his sidekick and protégé. They both kill countless “bad guys” with sociopathic ease and style, while still coming off as the likeable “good guys” they’re meant to be. Even Red Mist (Christopher “McLovin’” Mintz-Plasse), who is the next generation of “real” superhero after Kick-Ass, somehow lacks the verisimilitude of the title character. Very quickly, the world of Kick-Ass less resembles the world outside the theatre doors and becomes the four-color world of Kirby, only with more dead bodies and dismemberments. It is the Golden Age of superheroes through the lens of Frank Miller, Garth Ennis, and…well, Mark Millar.

So the film is stupid hyper violence, tempered occasionally by short trips into something resembling reality as a short reminder that this is all supposed to be taking place in the “real world.” From a mechanical stand-point, it is a very well made piece of pop culture bombast with tightly choreographed fight scenes, including one single-shot scene of Big Daddy meticulously emptying a room of greasy haired mobsters that is honestly jaw-dropping. The final conflict is probably too long, and the struggle between a grown man and an 11-year-old girl shifts between uncomfortable and implausible several times. But Vaughn’s eye for clean, focused action is a welcome departure from the myriad of fussy, quick-cut Bourne clones that have overrun Hollywood in the last ten years. This is the third time that Bourne has tried to make a superhero film (he was originally penned to direct both the third X-Men movie and then Thor, both of which he had to bow out of; it is hard to imagine what he would have done with either of those franchises), but he clearly is enjoying the sort of big kid’s playground that a story like this provides him. There is a certain joyful glee throughout the film, be it a little girl swinging around twin katanas or two teenagers having quickie in a back lot. Vaughn is having shameless fun, and by the films unbridled finale, the maniacal fun is catching.

Ultimately, though, Kick-Ass is a well-crafted, mindless roller coaster ride that is supposedly about how mindless roller coaster rides are a child’s fantasy. It just plays a tad disingenuous when it is clearly enjoying itself quite this much. The term “Kick-Ass” doesn’t just signify the title character, but the entire mindset that fuels the film; it picks up speed, barreling forward with increasing disregard for thought, reason or purpose with the sole purpose of kicking ass. Which is a worthwhile goal unto itself (Tarantino has made a career of doing just that), but the opening moments of Kick-Ass also seem to suggest a desire to offer a RoboCopian sense of self-satire, only to never fully commit to that. Instead, it acknowledges that it is ridiculous before fully embracing that identity and relishing it. In the process, it becomes a slick, occasionally edgy explosion of action and cursing instead of something truly special.