Review: Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass is the story of Dave Lizewski, a mild-mannered highschool geek. His only escape from his mundane life are the stories he reads in his weekly comics. Eventually, Dave takes hold of his destiny and becomes one of the masked crime-fighters he admired for so long. Becoming Kick-Ass, he quickly gains much notoriety, but soon finds himself in way over his head. The film makes two promises: 1) to satirize the genre in a post-modern way and 2) to show what it would be like for real people to be superheroes. If fails at both.

The beginning scenes offer a lot in terms of satirizing the genre. It's self-reflective nature turns most of the contemporary elements on its head. Dave's evolution to hero is not driven by a specific traumatic event, but rather an unflinching desire to end suffering. It is an almost wholly unselfish act. In one scene where he is being mugged for the umpteenth time, he notices a by-stander ignoring the crime. He notes that anyone else would act the same way and that is a despicable thing. As the movie progresses it stops satirizing and begins spoofing by taking genre standards and making them outlandish and humorously juvenile.

The second promise, showing realistic heroes, is not an original premise. Watchmen. Unbreakable. The tv series "Heroes." Even Batman, all take a stab at it. It is a concept still yet to be fully realized in my opinion. At first, Kick-Ass is a very real superhero. He loses his first fight. In his second, he is beaten mercilessly, but he ends the fight tending to a wounded stranger and staring down three large muggers. It is an effectively dramatic scene. Unfortunately, with the introduction of Hit-Girl and Big Daddy, the film becomes a living cartoon throwing out all it original intentions and slowly fading into unjustifiable absurdity.

I'm not entirely sure what I expected. I hoped for a very Edgar Wright like movie that takes the genre very seriously, but can equally find the humor in it, rather a straight forward spoof. In the beginning, the intentions seem very clear. That direction was admirable and ambitious, but it only ever nears "good," settling on chasing its tail with genre cliches and overly zealous ridiculousness. For a realistic, post-modern look at superheroics, I would recommend Special or Defendor instead.

4/10