Kick-Ass! (Don't bring the kids)

Oh my god, don't bring ANY kids, ever.

Sorry to jump right in there, but don't do it. I remember the tone and imagery of the trailer for this film being very poppy and fun - and in a way, it is. But this is fun for adults, comic origins and all. Think Sin City. But, if you can picture it - violent-er.

My overall impression of Kick-Ass is that I liked it - it was well-crafted, tightly executed storytelling that delivered, far more viscerally than expected, on all the notes one hopes for when seeing a superhero film. It isn't trying for the kind of verisimilitude found in M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable, but instead, as the narration suggests, occupies the territory of 'what if'? What if some normal people decided to be super heroes? The answer seems to be a zero-sum game for morality.

Roger Ebert, whose opinions of film I find at least fascinating, and with whom I normally find common ground, has written off Kick-Ass as morally bankrupt - an exercise in peverse brutality whose messages, satirical or otherwise, cannot redeem it. Harry Knowles at AICN defended the film, citing mostly generational differences as the reason why Ebert can't look past the admittedly thick layer of explicit mayhem to identify the point. Ebert acknowledged that indeed, the film is satire - but of what?

I would argue that Kick-Ass is a satire of our obsession with tragedy and wrong-doing, but with seeing it and not necessarily trying to change it. The film seems to suggest that is because of the cost. The only people here who actively do good get done in - or nearly done in, 11-year-olds notwithstanding. And they kill the bad guys, rather than tying them up, Spidey-style for the cops. And when I say kill, I mean it. Dudes get murdered. As comic-violence goes, this is not. It's pretty much just violence-violence, beginning with the main character getting knifed in the stomach and escalating from there. That 11-year-old I mentioned kills about as viciously as the bride did in Kill Bill. She was trained to do so by her own father. Ebert isn't wrong - that is nearly impossible to swallow.

So again, what is the point? I have to believe that the writers of the comic itself and the makers of this film don't just think it's cool to stage and execute a story in which an 11-year-old (Mindy!) ruthlessly and brutally murders criminals with her old man. Maybe the point is that in this world - and let me be clear that I am referring to the world of Kick-Ass and not reality - this is what it has come to. The cops are inept or corrupt or simply AWOL. The normal citizenry is apathetic, or worse, utterly fascinated by the broken quality of their world, but only so far as it fuels their You-Tube enabled voyeurism. All that is left is for kids and their parents to suit up and break heads (and necks, and wow, so much other stuff).

So that seemed the necessary ethical/moral comment on a deeply satirized piece of storytelling. And if you can get on side with that, or not, it's fine. I think there is adequate room to maneuver on both sides of this argument.

The film itself, as I said, is terrifically well put together. The casting is dead on across the board. I could single someone out, but I think I'd have to single everyone out because each note was struck with just the right performance. Each character here is well-motivated and well-written, and there's a wealth of depth in the themes and ideas (clearly) to get people talking. Music, editing and cinematography also contribute to this being a very tight, exciting package.

I guess the paradign shift here is this - People read comics and watch films about heroes to have their sense of heroism and riteousness provoked and energized. They love conflict, too, and a good bad guy is deeply compelling. So Kick-Ass gives us a world between comics and reality - where real people try to be heroes and have to lose some heroism in the process - they really become bad good-guys. It's the cost, I guess.



Notes on extra, random thoughts:

- Chloe Moretz has a Clint Eastwood sneer. She's going places, based on just this and 500 Days of Summer.

- The way Nicholas Cage spoke while in costume rested on a perfect line between funny and irritating.

- The sequences in the youtube video with the strobe light, and the sequence that begins by passing into the warehouse surveillance footage were tremendous.

- Mark Strong plays every role I've seen him in with amazing conviction and so I'd like to see him play a good guy soon - even as this dangerous, murdering mob man, he clearly loved his kid, and that kind of subtlety has potential beyond playing baddies.