The Ashcan

Reeling: “Kick-Ass”

Posted on 22. Apr, 2010 by Jef in Film, Reeling

You're the mirror! Get it??

First, a couple of warnings, none of them having anything to do with the stabbiness of 11-year-old girls: 1) yes I am a comics reader and that will show in the review, but it won’t get in the way and I’ll bring it up only for erudite critical reasons (lols); and 2) light SPOILER warning, because I want to talk at length about one scene in particular that wasn’t in the previews, but I promise to warn you right before it happens (it won’t until the end). And speaking of that infamous “controversial” 11-year-old girl, isn’t it funny that so many reviews mention she uses “the c-word” but, you know, there are two c-words, right? And yeah, she uses them both, but still. Wouldn’t “c-words” plural be more accurate? Or are we led to believe that one c-word is more objectionable than the other? This is the worst intro paragraph ever, I know. Ok yeah, the movie:

Kick-Ass was based on the same-name comics by writer Mark Millar and artist John Romita Jr., in which a not-geeky but not-cool kid (he just “exists”, he says) named David Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) wonders to his fellow comic-reading friends why nobody has ever tried being a superhero before. The answer, after Lizewski dons a green wet suit and mask and starts calling himself Kick-Ass, is provided by an assembly line of gangsters and two other, much more skilled (and pathologically crazy) masked heroes named Big Daddy and Hit Girl — the answer being: because you’d probably kill yourself in the process or have to kill other people. Both of which suck (but one less than the other).

That’s not a moral statement, either from me or the film. Kick-Ass starts with a What If? premise that hints at deconstructing or at least playfully skewering the world of comics, but really its aims are contained within the title. Kick-Ass is about delivering a rush; any nice subtle moments are just icing on the cake, and any expectations of genuine transgression are probably too high. Kick-Ass is a superhero tale through and through, but with crass humour added and a lot more violence. Lizewski’s only qualification for the job of masked avenger is that he can take a lot of punishment — director Matthew Vaughn expects the same from his audience.

The controversy that both haunted and helped the film’s release surrounds the Hit Girl character and Chloë Grace Moretz, the actor who was just 11 at the time of filming. A lot of hands have wrung over Moretz’s profanity-laden performance and the amount of arterial spray her Hit Girl character is responsible for. Whether the role is exploitative or not is a moot point though, since Kick-Ass is in a lot of ways an exploitation film. Is it irresponsible to cast a child in a movie/role like this one? The logic of that argument makes sense I guess but off the top of my head I can name more than one child actor who played controversial roles and grew up quite normal (and successful) and a handful of other child actors who played wholesome roles but wound up dysfunctional messes (or dead). As easy as it is to call Kick-Ass a dumb movie, those particular arguments against it are at least just as dumb.

Hit Girl is a fantastic creation — kinetic, funny, frightening, tragic. She puts the film in her utility belt and runs away with it, and in addition to her “awesome” traits she also provides a moment of genuine pathos in an otherwise heartless movie. Kick-Ass’s mother dies early in the movie for no reason other than a cheap laugh, but Hit Girl’s relationship with her father Big Daddy is one that rings emotionally true, despite Moretz and Nicolas Cage — especially Cage, who hilariously channels Adam West’s Batman for Big Daddy — turning on the kitsch with their delivery; both performances are startingly nuanced. The rest of the cast is quite good too, though less dimensional, and shoutouts to Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Red Mist for never playing the same geek twice (always a nerd, but only once a McLovin).

(Spoilers start here)

The film’s best sequence is a rescue job via Hit Girl, as the child rushes to save Big Daddy and Kick-Ass, who are tied to chairs in a warehouse, being abused by gangsters while a camera broadcasts it all over the internet in true torture porn style. Everything great about Kick-Ass is contained in this scene, and Vaughn constructs the hell out of it. Hit Girl kills the lights and switches to night vision; we see her sickly green POV, which Vaughn uses to recall the aesthetic of a first-person shooter video game. Her hands appear in the frame, they shoot, a pixelated bad guy falls, she reloads. Other films have cribbed from games before, but here it means more — Hit Girl’s vision is eerily detatched and methodical, bringing to light all the PC misgivings viewers might have about her being “brainwashed” into a murderer, or about modern pop culture in general. As exciting as it is to watch, her efficiency at killing is more frightening here than earlier, where it was mostly comical.

Big Daddy is doing some sideline coaching, yelling strategies to Hit Girl, and Cage’s ridiculous face and tone contrasts with Moretz, who plays calm, visibly trying to control her breathing. She just wants to save her dad from dying, but it’s like she has to do her homework first before ever even attempting to — first she has to kill this guy, then this guy, and so on. Which sucks, because Big Daddy is now on fire. Vaughn does the last bit in slow motion, Hit Girl leaping across the screen one frame at a time as she takes out the final villains. Big Daddy burns slowly in the corner and Kick-Ass is just there, all around helpless, as he’s been throughout the movie thus far. The slo-mo does two things: makes Hit Girl’s final blows all the more impressive, like a Manny Pacquiao instant replay, but it also heightens the tension because you know she just wants to save her damn father already. With one prolonged shot, Vaughn drives home that Hit Girl is effing awesome, but also that she can’t get there fast enough, and it’s riveting.

When finally she drapes a cape over Big Daddy to retard the fire, I could have cried. And when she looks the camera in the lens, says “show’s over” and smashes it, I could have cheered. I did, on the inside — not because it was an attempt at commenting on voyeurism, not because it was smart (because it wasn’t, really), not because the whole sequence spoke to my base desires and appetite for destruction, but because it was all a spectacular roller coaster that looped through all of that and maybe more. I was dumbfounded. I was Kick-Ass, sitting there, wide-eyed and all what the fuck just happened.

Look, viewers are going to project a wide array of shit onto Hit Girl — she’s built that way; The New Yorker reaches the longest and is the most condescending by suggesting Hit Girl appeals to pedophile fantasies, but in truth it’s not that deep. Why do I love Hit Girl? During that scene, I wanted to be Hit Girl. While I’ve been a lifelong comics reader, I haven’t felt that way about a character since, well, since I was Lizewski’s age. See what they did there? And the visceral disconnect, the joke, the meta commentary, the tragedy, the whatever you want, is that she’s an 11-year old girl.

Hit Girl is a blank slate for our projections because she’s a blank slate for Kick-Ass’s. If anyone is really hampered that Lizewski has no dramatic motivations for being a superhero, and for those who maybe don’t get Hit Girl’s appeal, well — not to get too insidery here or lazily dismissive — but I’m guessing the film just isn’t for you. Kick-Ass isn’t skewering comics fans like Lizewski, because that’s exactly who this film is made for. Kick-Ass turns you into a hero, beats you up, shows you why you’re stupid, then laughs with you and gives you a hi-five at the end. In many ways, the movie, like the comic, punishes you for liking it. But that’s not to say I think it’s smarter than it appears — just to say that it’s an over-the-top, inside-and-out ride. There are those of us who can take it, and like Lizewski, even some who kind of like it.

Tags: Aaron Johnson, Big Daddy, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, comics, Hit Girl, John Romita Jr, Kick-Ass, Mark Millar, Nicolas Cage, superheroes, The New Yorker-isms, this post is probably too long