It was at a preview screening in Seattle at Pacific Place on Monday night. The crowd was oddly quiet and relaxed before the film, which was weird, as most of the promotion was done via local comic book stores for this particular screening. During the very advance preview for Zombieland that we saw there, the crowd was really amped up and rowdy; by the time the opening chords of For Whom The Bell Tolls hit at the opening credits the place nearly flipped out. The KICK-ASS opening is the trailer scene of the guy flying off the side of the building in New York City–when that scene finished, the crowd DID go nuts, and it didn’t stop whooping and cheering the rest of the way. I think the crowd–for whatever reason–either had no idea what KICK-ASS was really going to be like or had never touched Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s comic book. We had, we’d seen the trailers, and were waiting for all hell to break loose, and holy shit does it.
Minor spoilers ahoy:
Way, way better than I was expecting.
The movie is much, much funnier than the trailer gives any clue it would be, and it’s much, much funnier than the comic book. Some bits of the comic are nearly perfect reproductions of the film. KICK-ASS and the car after his first superhero incident and his superhero public reveal in the camera phone video scene in particular. That scene from the trailers (“I’M KICK-ASS!”) was done INCREDIBLY well and a near perfect example of how to show a character transformation and origin in one go on-screen–it was thrilling and the single best scene in the film (second best is the hilarious Ennio Morricone bit).
Yes, the violence was at times totally absurd, but that was sort of the point–over the top and brutal violence is really the only weapon a “real life” superhero would have. No “Spider-Sense”, no Superman-style bouncing bullets off of your chest. You’d have to beat the holy hell out of someone–or shoot them–before the same happened to you. You’d get the tar beat out of you. Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale alluded to this in a few scenes in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but in that fantasy Batman has the world’s most cutting-edge armor, the world’s greatest ninja training, he’s the most driven and single-focused crime fighter of them all… and he’s still a battered mess of bruises and stitches. A normal person, trying to fight crime? It would be straight up kill-or-be-killed. Beat them rotten before they knife you.
She's going to piss off conservatives.
Even when Kick-Ass does kick ass in that “I’M KICK-ASS!” scene, he gets his ass completely kicked at the same time. He’s all but spitting up blood and teeth. It’s what all this would really look like, or as close as we’re likely to ever actually see unless someone does go and actually become a superhero. The film is brutally violent at times, but the comedy, the great characters, and the strong undercurrent of hope and idealism in the film completely mitigate and balance that. The microwave scene (best completely horrible joke scene of the year; it will be very hard to top, especially the reaction of the goombah on the far right side of the screen) and/or anything with Hit-Girl will probably get the most complaints for the Conservatives in the world, along with all the sex jokes.
There’s some unevenness in the acting, but that’s really my only sole complaint. Nicolas Cage is Nicolas Cage, and to me at least he can sometimes seem to veer far off the rails in performances, but that’s what I love about him. My wife unfortunately absolutely doesn’t like him as an actor because of this and thinks you get Nicolas Cage too much in films. She had no complaints about him in KICK-ASS, and by her rating that’s like forcefully shoving an Academy Award into his hands for playing Big Daddy in KICK-ASS. Seriously. I thought he was great. Chloe Moretz gets ALL the best lines, and the sheer madness of her spouting things like “Let’s see what you cunts can do now” and “Show’s over, motherfuckers!” is endlessly surreal paired with her adorable “Look what I did!” expressions when she’s sending body parts and viscera flying. For a little kid, she’s actually got some chops. The pacing, editing, soundtrack and structure of the film were perfect. It grabs onto your typical modern film ADD-riddled mind and just keeps shoving you forward in a very good way. The film visually was gorgeous.
I adored the last film Matthew Vaughn and Ben Davis did, Stardust, and I admit I like that film even a bit better than Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s book that it was based off of. I think KICK-ASS is a better film.
I’d summarize my review by the first thing I said the minute the credits popped up: “Yeah, we need this on Blu-Ray,” to which my wife said, “Are you fucking kidding? Hell yes.” It’ll be either a Zombieland+ level hit or a cult classic. I’m not sure which.
