A depressing experience at the cinema

Rating: 1/10 (12 April 2010)

I thought the idea of Kick Ass - everyday teens transforming themselves into superheroes to fight crime – looked like great fun. The ads looked promising too. As for the film itself, it was not lacking in skill, humour or inspiration, and it had some great performances to showcase.
However, the violence here ("casual slaughter" is a better term for it) was repugnant in its aim to excite and delight, and more than a little disturbing to watch as the audience hoots along with each 'kill'. Movies can be a great communal experience, but I can't recall a cinema experience where I have felt so depressingly cut off from my fellow human beings (a generous use of the term).
I suppose we are supposed to applaud the audaciousness and black comedy of a preteen girl slicing off bad men's legs and shooting them through the head, but to me it reeked of filmmakers desperately trying to find new and novel ways to hype audiences up. Of course, they framed the carnage unconvincingly around a 'perhaps the heroes are as sociopathic as the villains' theme, lest anyone dare question their motives. (Reminds me of Terminator 2's banal anti-violence message.) Oh yes, those baddies were bad, but, for instance, I wondered how families affected by suicide might have felt as audiences cheered on Hit Girl as she forces a bad guy to shoot himself through the head. Oh, but I'm missing the point, I guess The sad thing is that Kick Ass could have achieved its thematic aims without the graphic carnage. However, I doubt this approach would not have brought director Matthew Vaughan and writer Jane Goldman quite the level of attention they would appear to crave.
It's well time that Oliver Stone made Natural Born Killers 2 in order to provide another perceptive and unflattering mirror to an increasingly apathetic and sensation-focused society.
P.S. some hopeful newssome Australian film critics/commentators such as David Stratton, Tom Ryan and Richard Wilkins have publicly denounced the violence in the film. Thank you guysyou've already copped some ridicule for this, but at least some people are drawing the line, as well as seeing through the 'hipness'.