Kick Ass Director: Matthew Vaughan Script: Matthew

Kick Ass Director: Matthew Vaughan Script: Matthew

Kick Ass Director: Matthew Vaughan Script: Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman Cast: Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Moretz, Nicolas Cage The film Kick Ass starts of with Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) a geek who wonders why no one has ever tried to become a costumed superhero before. As his friend Marty (Clark Duke) explains, “Because they would get their asses kicked. ”  Marty’s not wrong. Dave doesn’t heed his pal’s advice, dons a wet suit, wields two batons, creates the alter-ego of “Kick-Ass” and goes out to fight bad guys.We soon see that despite Dave’s enthusiasm and bravery, he’s only playing at the amateur level.

The pros are Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz) and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), an adorable father-daughter duo who go out for ice cream by day and render criminals into slaughtered remains at night. Cage may be the biggest name actor in the film, but he makes a delightful turn in an important supporting role that helps bolster the world while helping to ground Hit-Girl as a real character who isn’t a disturbed individual despite her disturbing actions as a murderous vigilante.The performance people will be buzzing about is Moretz. Hit-Girl steals the show with her brutal-yet-stylish kills, foul-mouthed dialogue, and her disarmingly sweet face. Hit-Girl is like the child on the front of a cereal box except the cereal isn’t a nice mix of toasted oats and marshmallows but of razorblades and shotgun shells.

If you take a step back, the idea of Hit-Girl is disturbing. She’s a child with no regard for human life or a modicum of mercy. Her father puts a bulletproof vest on her and then shoots his little girl so she won’t be afraid when she’s looking down the barrel of a Glock.Superheroes let us imagine ourselves as protectors who can do great things. Dave just makes himself the star of his own superhero comic  He may get his ass kicked, but Johnson makes Dave come off like a hero and not a schmuck.

As Dave looks into his bedroom mirror and tries out one-liners against imaginary bad guys, Johnson manages to take what could feel like an unnerving Joker (Batman Villain) moment and transforms it into feeling like a kid playing superhero in his back yard. For a film that could be wildly schizophrenic, Vaughn rips forth method from the madness and keeps the characters sane despite their insane actions.Working from a charged script he co-wrote with Jane Goldman, Vaughn electrifies the world of Kick-Ass with crackling dialogue, likable characters, and array of miscellaneous tools of destruction that I won’t spoil here. Vaughn’s trick is to not rip comic book characters out of the books and into a real world, but to rip out comic book pages, anime, B-movie action, and push the real world inside the gleeful chaos that cranks what you love about pop-violence entertainment and pushes the envelope of destruction as far as it can go.

Kick Ass transports the viewer into a world of superheroes without superpowers, the celebration of online celebrity, and a level of exaggerated violence that would border on disturbing were it not imbued with childlike joy. In the Kick Ass is a fun, clever labour of love that manages to be part action movie, part teen comedy and an affectionate tribute to all that makes the superhero simultaneously awe-inspiring and utterly ridiculous.