Kick-Ass (2010)

            Where to even begin?  Kick-Ass has been a highly anticipated project around the Internet blogospheres and fan-boy kingdoms.  And it will come as little surprise that the final product is right up their alley as it mixes smart visuals, foul-mouths, caped crusaders, squirting blood, controlled fight scenes, hot girls, fan-boys, pop culture references, out-of-control fight scenes, and comedy into an almost inescapably entertaining and jaw-dropping 2 hours.  It is no exaggeration that even before the credits roll it would be a pleasure for the movie to restart itself.

            Matthew Vaughn heads back to the arena from which his debut feature, the fantastically stylish and awesome L4yer Cake, hails, and returns with an even more fantastically stylish and awesome film cut from the pages of a comic book.  Vaughn wrote the script concurrently with the comic writer Mark Millar, who pitched the idea.  In what is certainly a regretted mistake, Sony passed on the film forcing Vaughn to finance the film on his own.  It has since made back its $30 million budget in just over a week and word on the street is that it rocks.

            It would be a simple task, if unnecessary, to freeze frame the entire film and recompose to form an accompanying graphic novel.  Vaughn stations the frame about, making transitions weave in and out of one another and making their presence known only when they desire.  He lets the visual landscape provide

ready-made openings through which he transports the viewer; graphically matching a tombstone and cereal box is simple and pleasing.  The fight scenes are shot and timed with precise flair that calls out Zach Snyder and Guy Ritchie, giving them each the one-up.  There appears to be a consistent and clever choreography to the films visuals hits and from start to finish maintains a line between realism and escapism.

            Much of the film’s attention has been placed on the aspects for which it undoubtedly deserves a restricted rating.  The violence and profanity is nothing we haven’t seen before.  For that matter, neither is the fact that a young girl is spewing both.  The issue rises when the topic is taken outside the diegesis and we have a young actress of the same age dropping f bombs and c-words.  In fact, a character who unsympathetically kills everyone she fights is only tamed by such expletives.  The violence itself is not unusually excessive or disgusting and the arsenal of weapons is pushed to comic proportions.  Comparing Vaughn to Tarantino would not be out of mind.

            The film is very much a product of this day and age and could easily have been composed in the web pits of meme fandom.  Pop-culture references abound making the text multilayered.  From Leone’s For a Few Dollars More theme song to tracks taken from two Danny Boyle films.  The soundtrack boasts a list of familiar names including some of the more overplayed radio hits.  Scarface is hinted at both subtly and explicitly.  Further, Kick-Ass himself finds expedient YouTube fandom and manages his crime-fighting career via his computer.  It’s as if the film was written to inspire, or at least allow vicarious immersion within, a similar lifestyle.  The pop-art screams off the screen with Andy Warhol featured prominently and certainly more references than I am even aware of.

            Matthew Vaughn scores a major hit with what will probably be one of the most fun films this year.  The fact that Nic Cage is quite acceptable as a Batman rip-off doesn't hurt either.  My only minor complaint is that indelibly fantastic Mark Strong isn’t allowed much distance from his former roles.  The film is bloody, commands a considerable body count, and manages to maintain a light tone betwixt the murders.  I am pretty sure I need to see it again.