Daze Lizewski (Aaron-Taylor Johnson) is an average high schooler in New York City who by his own words has nothing special about him. Dave has a crush on his classmate Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca) but lacking the confidence to engage her spends time with his two friends Marty (Clarke Duke) and Todd (Evan Peters) reading and discussing the minutia of comics. Dave wonders why no-one becomes a superhero in real life and decides to purchase a green wetsuit with yellow piping and matching mask to become a masked crime fighter. When his first attempt fails leaving him stabbed and injured, his injuries give him the benefit of deadening his nerve endings allowing him heightened tolerance to pain. Kick-Ass becomes a viral sensation while Dave gets the attention of his crush Katie only to find out she thinks he's gay. Meanwhile, Kick-Ass is not the only superhero vigilante as former cop Damon Macready (Nicolas Cage) and his daughter Mindy (Chloe Grace Moretz) also do vigilante activities as Big Daddy and Hit-Girl respectively intent on taking down crime boss Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong) who framed Damon and caused a string of events that led to his wife's suicide. As Dave continues to fight as Kick-Ass and other heroes like Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) appear in the scene, Dave finds his world spiraling out of control with escalating violence and chaos.
Kick-Ass is an adaptation of the creator owned comic written by Mark Millar and illustrated by John Romita Jr. Of the same name. The rights to the film were sold before a single issue of the comic was published as a chance encounter between Millar and director Matthew Vaughn at the premiere of Vaughn's sophomore feature Stardust lead to the two discussing Millar's concept which lead to Millar writing the comic and Vaughn and his writing partner Jane Goldman writing the script for the film. While studios were interested in the property, they wanted to either age up the characters (particularly Hit-Girl) or tone down the violence both of which Vaughn refused. This meant that financing was done independently with no studio set to distribute the film until Lionsgate finally acquired the film for a wide-release. The movie received terrific reviews from critics (with exceptions from some who decried the film's violence as "morally reprehensible"). While Box Office for the film was okay, Lionsgate had expected due to the amount of internet traffic surrounding the film it would be on the level of something like Zombieland but ended more on a level similar to Kill Bill or one of the Punisher movies. The movie did however score some solid home media sales. Kick-Ass is an influential film that may not have been given its deserve audience recognition, but it's a daring an influential movie that laid the foundation for other challenging comic book adaptations like Kingsman and Deadpool.
Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn have done a great job translating Mark Millar's work to film. I actually didn't like the Kick-Ass comic and despite it being one of Mark Millar's best known works, it's probably the one I least like (maybe Marvel's Civil War at a close second). The Kick-Ass comic is a very nasty mean spirited piece of work and it's not because of its violence (that I have no problem with), but because it's got a very nihilistic and misanthropic core to it that actively revels in a lot of elements that feel bitter, dark, and sometimes downright hateful (especially a twist involving Big Daddy that's thankfully been excised from the film). The comic also gave me the sense that it hated its main character with Dave often portrayed as kind of a weaselly and pathetic character who at one point stands around a location for three hours to talk to his dream girl and not to spoil anything but that dream girl, imagine the exact opposite of every mainstream love story you've seen then multiply it by a schadenfreude factor of five. Goldman and Vaughn's take on the character makes Dave a more relatable character and the movie feels like it believes in him and wants him to win in a way the comic never gave us. While Goldman and Vaughn do a good job of translating most of the core elements from the comic, they do struggle with one, the character of Red Mist. In both the comic and movie, Chris aka Red Mist, is the son of the main gangster bad guy who becomes instrumental Frank D'Amico's war against the costumed crimefighters. While Chris wasn't all that interesting or developed in the comics, his character did at least make sense within the story. Chris in the movie is very odd because he wants to be like his father Frank, but he also is shown to respect Kick-Ass (to a degree anyway) and at one point even tries to help Kick-Ass which puts the character in an odd place as he's got redeeming points to him while also still serving as an antagonist. The movie also keeps the "gay misunderstanding" subplot from the comic and I suppose it's handled a little better here than when it was in the comic, but there are still elements that are cringe inducing in hindsight such as the "spray on tan" scene. With that said I do prefer Goldman and Vaughn's take on the subplot over Mark Millar's so it's still a net improvement overall.
Despite some hiccups in translating the material, the movie's cast does great with it. Nicolas Cage is amazing as Big Daddy with his trademark intensity coming through in all the best ways (especially in narrating a 3D rendered comic-book style original story of how he and his daughter became Big Daddy and Hit-Girl). Aaron-Taylor Johnson is a likable lead in the role of Dave/Kick-Ass and he shows a natural charm and charisma in his performance here. Mark Strong is also a lot of fun as our main antagonist Frank D'Amico who takes the very basic gangster archetype and plays up the humor from the frustration he feels at having costumed nuts ruining his business. But stealing every scene she's in is Chloe Grace Moretz as Mindy aka Hit-Girl whose action scenes are the highlight of the film as she unleashes bullets and foul language aplenty in sequences that are both darkly humorous and also quite thrilling.
Kick-Ass is a strong and stylish superhero film that plays its concept of "real world" superheroes quite well both for dark as black humor as well as for action-noir. Matthew Vaughn stylishly directs the film with his and Jane Goldman's screenplay filing down the rougher edges of Mark Millar's source work while keeping the core appeal and the cast do a great job of bringing their characters to life. Kick-Ass is entertainingly violent and darkly humorous and if those are what you expect, you'll get them with a heaping helping of style and craft.
