“Kick-Ass”
Okay, people. Everybody’s talking about Kick-Ass on Twitter. And the mainstream press:
A.O. Scott
What Hit-Girl does is attack her enemies with all kinds of weaponry: ultra-sharp blades; high-caliber firearms; her own fleet and tiny fists. The results, while hardly realistic, are full of the sights and sounds of bodily harm. Bones crack, flesh bruises, blood gushes, limbs and extremities fly, and bodies hit the ground with a sickening thud.
This kind of grisly spectacle is nothing new, though there is some novelty in seeing a child, a girl in particular, mete out such mayhem. And in the climactic fight sequences, as Hit-Girl moves closer to exacting vengeance on the chief bad guy, she becomes a victim as well as an agent of the violence. After surviving a fusillade of machine-gun fire, she is punched, stomped on, thrown and threatened with a gun to her head.
Moving the fanboy wish fulfillment scenario of “Spider-Man” a couple of steps further toward the real world (though certainly not all the way there), “Kick-Ass” delivers an awkward Everykid who succeeds (eventually) as a crime-fighter without the benefit of super powers or, frankly, a whole lot of smarts.
If the film’s extreme violence will counteract its good-natured humor for some multiplex audiences (since when do caped crusaders go out of their way to kill the bad guys?), its balancing act between innocence and gore perfectly matches the expectations of genre fans, who should embrace the movie.
Shall I have feelings, or should I pretend to be cool? Will I seem hopelessly square if I find “Kick-Ass” morally reprehensible and will I appear to have missed the point? Let’s say you’re a big fan of the original comic book, and you think the movie does it justice. You know what? You inhabit a world I am so very not interested in. A movie camera makes a record of whatever is placed in front of it, and in this case, it shows deadly carnage dished out by an 11-year-old girl, after which an adult man brutally hammers her to within an inch of her life. Blood everywhere. Now tell me all about the context.
Youth, danger, fun, rule-busting defiance. That’s the juice of rock & roll. It’s also the juice in Kick-Ass, a mosh pit of a comic-book movie that dares you to dive into its anarchy. Even when the film swerves off its twisty tracks, there’s something potently unslick about the take of Brit director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Stardust) on the vision of writer Mark Millar (Wanted). Ever since audiences got a pervy taste of Kick-Ass at July’s Comic-Con, tight-asses have been nervously clenching.
The hate is aimed at Hit Girl, an 11-year-old killer with a Mamet mouth, a Tarantino jones for violence and a vigilante Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) who teaches her to avenge the death of her mother. “OK, you cunts, let’s see what you can do,” hisses Hit Girl, before decimating her enemies with a butterfly knife (a gift from Daddy) in a scene of bug-fuck gore set to the kiddie theme from The Banana Splits. As played in spectacular fashion by Chloe Moretz, 13 — the sis in (500) Days of Summer — Hit Girl, suited up in purple and deliciously unsuited for mass consumption, is a nightmare for the Christian right.
More from Patrick Goldstein.
Movieblog.mtv.com reminds us that ‘Kick-Ass’ Is Just The Latest In A Long String Of Filthy-Mouthed Movie Titles.
Here is the LionsGate Kick-Ass YouTube site.
Here is a trailer:
http://i.clevver.com/flash/clvembed.swf?vid=241272
And you can go here to get taste of the profanity, violence, and mastubatory fantasies that (evidently) infuse the movie.
BoxOfficeMojo is predicting a similar opening weekend as Zombieland around $25M. Because Kick-Ass is already a cultural phenomenon, I’ll predict it goes pretty well north of that. My guess: $35M. Not bad for a movie that cost $30M to produce.
How about you? Interested in watching a 10-year-old girl swear like a sailor? Not?
Tomorrow’s interview is with the movie’s director and co-writer Matthew Vaughn.
UPDATE: Yet more evidence that I was right not to go into movie marketing and distribution. My $35M guess is just slightly off official projections.
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