Kick-Ass
Every now and then they come up with an
idea for a movie that is so groundbreaking and so mindbending
that they have to spend at least year before it comes out explaining it to you
and getting you ready because otherwise the cinema would just be covered in
brains and guts from all the minds being blown on opening night. The makers of Kick-Ass have spent a year talking to every blabbermouth website on
the internet telling us everything about their film. They’ve made posters and cut a trailer that
revealed 75% of the film. The restaurant
business has been operating this way for years.
People eat the food, then pay.
Now the film industry is finally catching up by spending almost as much
as the film’s actual budget on promotion that shows
you the whole film and they then expect you to show up and pay to watch the
whole thing.
I want to thank the makers and promoters
of Kick-Ass for helping me slowly
get my head around this difficult concept of a movie. I probably never would’ve understood this idea
of a movie about a guy who puts on a silly costume and fights crime as a
vigilante because there are only about 20 films a year made using this idea. And if you have a bad memory they also
directly reference all those superhero movies in this one. The film directly addresses the unoriginality
of the characters and their situations but not really in a way that it became a
joke like it probably should’ve. They
just say things like “he dresses like Batman”
or “I’ve got steel plates on my bones
like Wolverine”.
Watching this film made me feel psychic,
like I’d already seen it before and now I’m just going through the motions, but
then Nicolas Cage is there it started making me wonder if this is some sort of
high concept art in which the trailer and film of Kick-Ass work together as a sequel to Cage’s film Next.
Cage has been working miracles within the cinematic artform
for some time now and his last film Badder Lieutenant:
Port of Call New Orleans felt like such a reflective milestone that it made
me think maybe he’s just getting way existential and Kick-Ass via its own promotion is actually a sequel to Next via the meta-self-awareness of Adaptation. How he’s going to revisit Con Air in this meditative state has me
held in suspense.
But aside from the final twenty minutes,
the trailer also deceives you a bit on the tone of this film. I was expecting something way more meanspirited and smartassed and
what I got was more just something unspirited and halfassed. There’s a
bit of vulgar teen humour and bit a bit of comic gore, but really, nothing
anywhere as near as much as I would’ve expected considering the hype. Listening to the guys promote this movie and
chase controversy I was expecting something along the lines of Tokyo Gore Police. The extra bit of gore and vulgar humour
definitely made me like this a bit more than most superhero movies, but nothing
that even really stands out to me as any kind of reinvention of the genre.
I’ll give this movie credit for a couple
of things. And no, casting Nic Cage
isn’t one of them seeing as I think they kinda wasted
his fucking time getting him to be in this thing. I will say that they built the plot a little
better than Spiderman. Things get set up pretty well and the pacing
is pretty good. I can’t give this movie huge points for this because they follow Spiderman’s formula so closely that
simply tightening its bolts isn’t any big achievement.
I’ll also say that Mark Strong is working
his way off probation. I thought he was kinda blah in Rocknrolla and then I thought he stepped up to full scale
sucking in Sherlock Holmes but he’s
actually okay in this. Maybe doing an
American accent was the thing that helped him remind him he’s acting and should
make an effort to be entertaining or at least somewhat convincing in his role.
I also can’t believe they got a good
looking love interest. I thought after
Maggie Gyllenhall and Kirsten Dunst
that it was some sort of rule in superhero movies that they cast women who
comic book geeks could realistically expect to date but the chick in this movie
is actually pretty cute. I’ll also give
them credit for the one cliché they actually dodge: putting the love interest
in peril during the big climax. But
that’s probably the best thing I can say about the climax (the 20 minute part
not shown in the trailers). I think when
you have a movie that contains a scene early on in which two heroes sit in a
room with walls covered in guns and discuss the films of John Woo, you are making a promise to your audience. This film does not honour that promise. Unless I misinterpreted what they were
getting at and this film is a metaphor for John Woo’s career in that it sucks
post-Nic Cage. Fuck, how much more
meta-Cage contemplation can I fit in this writeup?
I also think it’s time that filmmakers
learn not to play well-known songs during fight scenes. It takes it down a notch. It makes it seem like they’re dancing or I’m
just watching a trailer and not there in the moment.
So although this is not the full-on shockvalue Verhoeven superhero
movie they made it sound like they had on their hands, they have made a mildly
offbeat version of the superhero movie.
And I use the term ‘mildly’ very mildly, or I guess I use it severely to
imply the strong mildness of it. I liked
this film more than most superhero movies, and I guess this is a step right
direction towards eventually getting an Observe
& Report level of black morality superhero movie. But they’re really gonna
have to cut down this meta-jabber bullshit.
Even when they made Scream,
like half my lifetime ago, the characters didn’t quote and reference Freddy Kruger
and shit as often or as directly as this.
Yeesh.
If you liked
this, check out these other recommended readings:
Okay, I actually review it
this time instead of just making fun of you guys who went to see it.
Merry fucking Christmas
There’s only one way
out….of The Cage!
This my attempt at
writing a blaxploitation superhero movie.
By request from
Renee.