Eye Candy #321 - "Kick-Ass"

Kick-Ass:  I’ve been a comic geek longer than I’ve been most of the things in my life.  And while I have not read Mark Millar’s comic “Kick Ass”, upon which this movie is based, I’ve read enough of his other work to get the over-the-top, ridiculous streak that runs through some of his most violent work - it’s absurd and played for laughs.  So it should come as no surprise that “Kick-Ass” is very much in that same style.  High school nobody Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) decides to become a costumed superhero in NYC, even though he has no powers or skills to speak of.  But through the amazing communication power of the internet, he becomes a sensation.  This puts him into the crosshairs of two different groups - 1.) mob boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong, very good here) and his cronies; and 2.) two other costumed vigilantes, Big Daddy (Nic Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz), who do have the skills to pay the bills.  Kick-Ass himself is also juggling girl troubles, with the cute girl Katie finally coming around, but only because she thinks Dave is gay.   Blacker-than-pitch comedy, with enough violence and gun-fu, it would make John Woo proud, this film is raucous, laugh-out-loud funny, and profane.   People are shot, stabbed, microwaved, burned, blown up, run over, and severely beaten (sometimes repeatedly).  We also get Moretz stealing the picture as Hit Girl, the most violent 11 year old you’ve ever seen with the mouth of a sailor (she has some GREAT lines that even grown men would be ashamed to say).  Matthew Vaughn, who gave us the great, great “Layer Cake”, directs here with style (I particularly like the use of punk music when Hit Girl swings into action; the first time it’s to the Dickies’ version of the “Banana Splits” theme song, which I found a hysterical contrast to the carnage HG was committing on the screen).  I laughed a lot at this film, but I can see how the easily offended would be put off by this (as the easily offended are put off by just about anything).  And I think Roger Ebert’s comments about this film being “morally reprehensible” misses the point of the film - people that express an interest in being superheroes may indeed be sociopaths and more than a little masochistic, regardless of their hearts being in the right place, because sometimes that is what’s required when you can’t fly through the air or talk to sea creatures.  Woodchuck sez, “Good stuff.”