Mr. Beaks Throughly Enjoys KICK-ASS And Believes He Still Is A Good Person!
Published at: April 16, 2010, 4:57 p.m. CST by mrbeaks
Matthew Vaughn's adaptation of Mark Millar's KICK-ASS is both a bloodthirsty right-wing fantasy and a sophomoric spoof of that fantasy, allowing viewers to sate their inner Paul Kersey for a couple of hours while refusing to let them mistake the proceedings for anything approaching social commentary or genre deconstruction. It's a big, gratuitously violent goof, and, as such, is not worth the sphincter-tightening outrage inspired by Timur Bekmambetov's WANTED, which idiotically rewrote Millar's amoral shenanigans as a journey of self-discovery for the nascent mass murderer. WANTED seemed like it could give dipshits the wrong idea; the only thing KICK-ASS will motivate impressionable viewers to do is to buy another ticket and see it again.
Despite having little affection for the comic book (Millar just never hooked me), I've been intrigued by the film iteration of KICK-ASS ever since I breezed through the screenplay by Vaughn and Jane Goldman two years ago. It was a bizarre amalgamation of influences, but so confidently executed that I never once checked out and wondered why I was giddily tearing through a vigilante teen comedy that abruptly shifts protagonists halfway through to focus on a prepubescent girl's relentless quest for revenge. It was controlled chaos; the KILL BILL of comic book scripts. I just had no idea what it would look like as a live-action film.
Nailing the tone would be key, and, with Vaughn at the helm, there was mild cause for concern. Though LAYER CAKE was a terrific debut, it was also a straight-ahead gangster flick; STARDUST, on the other hand, was a less precise thing, and the mixture of fantasy, adventure, romance and comedy didn't always mesh. But at least STARDUST sported a somewhat traditional narrative. KICK-ASS was anything but conventional. And it was so unabashedly profane that any attempt to dilute the violence or soften the language would rob the film of what made it special. Basically, there were any number of ways to get KICK-ASS wrong, and only one way to get it right: shoot the script as it existed as far outside of the studio system as possible (on a budget that probably wouldn't finance an eighth of IRON MAN 2). But even then there was no guarantee that this wild, utterly unique screenplay would result in a watchable movie. KICK-ASS would either work fully, or fail totally. The potential for folly was perilously high.
Turns out the risk was worth it. The material may be utterly demented and socially irresponsible, but Vaughn has delivered in KICK-ASS the most viscerally entertaining superhero movie since SPIDER-MAN 2 - and I can't emphasize "viscerally" enough because you will not walk out of this film debating the genre's troubling tendency toward vigilantism. True, KICK-ASS is plenty subversive in that it asks the audience to root for a character who's brainwashed his eleven-year-old daughter and turned her into a mini-Mifune killing machine, but it's also the kind of film in which the Mafia runs New York City like it's 1930s Chicago. Don't look too deeply; this is more DANGER: DIABOLIK than THE DARK KNIGHT.
The further I back away from KICK-ASS, the more stunned I am that it works. Before Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) transforms himself into the titular hero of the film, he's just your typical comic-book-obsessed dork. The biggest tragedy in Dave's life was the death of his mother, but she was felled by an aneurism, not some random gunman (and Vaughn/Goldman treat this as an off-handed punch line). Dave has no reason to enter the masked avenger racket save for evincing what William Goldman calls "stupid courage" - which, if he doesn't get stabbed to death, might help him get in the pants of comely classmate Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca). It's an odd storytelling dilemma: we like Dave, but we aren't exactly rooting for him to get even with anyone.
That's where Damon and Mindy Macready (Nicolas Cage and Chloe Moretz), aka Big Daddy and Hit Girl, come in. They have a very palpable grudge against crime lord Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong). But Vaughn and Goldman immediately challenge your sympathy by introducing Damon firing a live round from a high-caliber handgun into Mindy's (bulletproof vest-protected) chest so she knows what it feels like to be shot. Of course, in the totally bonkers KICK-ASS universe, this counts as bonding, and it is rather endearing (the Great Santini bouncing a basketball off his son's head plays more vicious than this). Once he lovingly promises to take her out for ice cream after shooting her a few more times, it's hard not to make peace with Damon's parenting philosophy.
There's obviously a transgressive kick to the idea of Hit Girl, but Vaughn and Goldman responsibly depict her as the greatest little sister ever; you're both protective and in awe of her. Some may find her rampant use of expletives distressing; I'm assuming these people also turn up their noses at Tatum O'Neal in THE BAD NEWS BEARS (an apt comparison because Moretz really is that good). As for Hit Girl's extreme capacity for violence... look, this isn't fucking LOS OLVIDADOS. It's an aburdist superhero movie with lots of CG bloodletting. It's not real. Were you outraged by the sight of Baby Droopy beating the shit out of Dishonest Dan? No? Okay, then. And if you're worried about Moretz being asked to commit unspeakable pretend acts on a movie set, I sure hope you never see PRETTY BABY (and I certainly hope you never gave it three stars). I'd understand these concerns had Vaughn staged his action sequences like Travis Bickle storming Sport's lair, but, because he is a generally sane individual, he did not do this. Actually, in their economy and inventiveness, Vaughn's set pieces remind me of Kurt Wimmer's EQUILIBRIUM: Hit Girl reloads her handguns at impossible angles (with flying clips miraculously falling into place), while the precise geography of the action is consistently more important than the reality of it. There's never any doubt that this is a comic book movie, and a patently loopy one at that - which, for better or worse, frees up Vaughn to stage a stunningly brutal fistfight between D'Amico and Hit Girl. Again, some may be repulsed by this. Fair enough. I just have a hard time believing a seasoned moviegoer could make their way into the third act of Vaughn's film and suddenly be worried that D'Amico might have a shot at murdering Hit Girl.
KICK-ASS might be shamelessly gory, but it's not cruel. It's also so insistently silly that you never take its celebration of vigilantism as anything more than a playground game of make-believe. Vaughn and Goldman have approached Millar's material as rambunctious juveniles and written the kind of feverish, balls-to-the-wall superhero romp you might've dreamt up when you were eight. Due process and all that civilized stuff is flouted not because they've a distaste for it, but because it's less satisfying than facing down the bad guys with a small arsenal of ill-intent strapped to your back. Justice is just... cooler this way. If you need to a) view KICK-ASS as a sneaky indictment of the inherent fascism of superhero narratives to make yourself feel better about cheering like an idiot through the whole film, or b) decry it as the most morally reprehensible piece of filmmaking in the medium's history, go right ahead. Just know that's baggage you brought into the movie with you. Because when it comes to deconstructing KICK-ASS, I'm pretty sure an eleven-year-old killing machine is just an eleven-year-old killing machine. And thank god for that.
