Kick-Ass

When I was young, I would play cowboys and indians, cops and robbers, and all the other type of games that involve action, guns, and dressing up in a cool costume. To impress the girl across the road, I even donned a black skivvy, tracksuit pants, and a balaclava. My cape would be my Dad’s old black business shirt that I would tie the sleeves around my neck. I would climb over the side fence and run out onto the street while she played with her brothers on the lawn, and yell out in a semi-deep voice, “You rang?”

I would be crash-tackled by her brothers, bashing the crap out of me. I’d then knock them all down with my invisible gun, hug the girl, then run back home and hide in the backyard again.

I had totally forgotten all about that, until I saw Kick-Ass.

This movie would be the closest thing you could get to a decent ‘realistic’ superhero movie, without the superpowers. Our wanna-be superhero, Dave Lizewski (played by Aaron Johnson), is your typical nerdy, pubescent teenager at high school. He’s not part of any major club. He just turns up at school, fantasizes about his busty teacher naked, has a crush on a girl in his year, and goes home to take advantage of the highly accessible free porn online. (If you found this site via Google with that last 3 words, you won’t find any here. Try again!) One day, while with his friends at the comic book store, he gets a brain-wave. Noticing there are lack-of superheroes, he buys a scuba costume and becomes “Kick-Ass“.

After a near-death experience trying to solve a crime, he accidentally falls into the middle of a crime scenario, where he helps out a victim being attacked. On-lookers film the footage and post it up on YouTube. Popularity soars, and just when he realises he can’t handle it all – experienced crimefighters Big Daddy and Hit-Girl come to help him out. From there, everything else unravels, in terrible and destructive ways.

Comic book nut Nicolas Cage, who plays Big Daddy, does a fantastic job at portraying this larger-than-life character. You’ll notice the big influence and homages to Adam West’s Batman speech, to Christian Bale’s modern Batman suit. Big Daddy isn’t fighting on his own though. His 12 year old daughter, Hit-Girl (played by Chloë Grace Moretz), is a super-energetic, knife-welding, foul-mouthed superhero, who many tend to underestimate due to her size and age.

The action sequences are second to none, with detailed and slow-motion shots every time someone gets stabbed, shot, or has their face punched in. With some gravity-defying kicks and jumps, it did bring out the kid in me – wishing I could relive my childhood again. But I just can’t live without superpowers.

A definite watch if you love your comic books.

[xrr rating=4/5]