Oh, the charmless part, in my opinion, was the entire scene seeped in such loudness that you’re supposed to hear, and feel, the ripples of that discharged bullet. But the movie gets more gratuitously brutal. I especially felt rotten after a turncoat mobster gets “microwaved” to death. But Moretz, as Mindy Macready a.k.a. Hit Girl gets battered viciously in the last act of the film, like she was just one of the guys. Her age is 11.
At this point in my review, I’ve made it sound like this father-daughter duo is the core of the movie but I have misled you. Aaron Johnson is the high school outcast who narrates the movie, who just wants to make a difference. Whether it’s a difference to the world or a difference to himself, does it really matter? He wonders why no ordinary people have ever tried to become a superhero. He wants to try, but with zero imagination, no helpful gadgets, it is no surprised he gets pummeled in his first two outings.
Charisma is everything to the movies, or at least used to be everything. It doesn’t help that Johnson has about one-tenth of the charisma of Jay Barouchel, and being compared to Barouchel is not flattering in the first place. He’s just an unhappy young man whom I guess is pounding out his frustrations by being a superhero named Kick-Ass. He’s no nice, charismatic kid like Peter Parker. Somehow, even with his superhero ineptness and ambiguous intentions, he gets a girlfriend in this movie.
The genre requires an evil genius, but you will have to settle for a stock character villain. The kingpin of the movie is Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong) and he tries to keep his business from his son Chris, who will become Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, the McLovin’ kid). Red Mist has the moxie to join Kick-Ass and Hit Girl, but with fidelity to his father’s business, only joins them to lure them to their capture. Let the slashing and gashing begin. Cage, who becomes the alias Big Daddy, gets brutalized in quite an awful way. His daughter Hit Girl is bummed, I guess, but somehow we think she will survive this ordeal with a next day brush-off.
This isn’t courage being mounted as message, it’s all displays of dehumanized behavior. This movie is for undiscerning viewers who enjoy overstylized ultraviolence for the sake of it being, uh, gnarly and way cool. Most moviegoers don’t know the names of the director responsible, but I take part in my duty to know so. Watching “Kick-Ass,” I at times thought I was watching “Natural Born Killers” as directed by the Wachowski Brothers, and repackaged with a smiley face for general young audiences. The name of the director is actually Matthew Vaughn, and he is now on my hate list. I am glad that I saw “Date Night” and “Death at a Funeral” recently, as an antidote, because after those two I can now add to my love list.
Go to the official site at http://www.kickass-themovie.com/
Grade: D+
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