Super Lock Stock and Three Smokin Batmans

Rating: 8/10 (15 August 2010)

Dave Lizewski is a comic reading, invisible to girls, High School geek. Who has a dream to become a superhero, although there is one problem...he has no revenge mission, super powers or training...but he does have a scuba suit! He embarks on a mission to help fight crime as the superhero Kick Ass and in one night, as a civilian films him fighting a gang of criminals, he becomes an internet phenomenon. This prompts the world to take notice, including other superheroes Hit Girl and Big Daddy and the evil gangster Frank D'Amico and his son who realises the benefits of creating an alter ego.
This is an excellent film jam packed with energy, jokes, action and great dialogue. The film starts out as a teen comedy in the vein of Superbad but quickly goes darker. Director Matthew Vaughn's history has been in gritty English gangster movies and this really shows through in the middle of the film. Genuinely nasty characters doing nasty things could quite easily be at home in Snatch or Layer Cake, make up the baddies for our superheroes to battle against. As soon as we are introduced to Hit Girl (an 11 year old knife wielding little ninja), her father Big Daddy (a betrayed ex cop looking for revenge) and Red Mist (the baddie alter ego of Frank D'Amico's son) you really start to feel you are watching a superhero movie. There are some great comic book references and they really help to remind you this is a superhero movie as at some parts the action is good enough to be a stand alone gangster flick and the jokes good enough for any comedy.
Aaron Johnson is great as Kick Ass as he is geeky enough to warm to but edgy enough to be credible, Christopher Mintz-Plasse fresh from McLovin in Superbad is also great as Red Mist and Nicholas Cage is understated and as he plays the revengeful Big Daddy. But the show is stolen by Chloe Moretz as she plays the truly brilliant Hit Girl. I don't think many non animation films have featured such a young assassin and she certainly takes centre stage and is played brilliantly.
The film crosses three genres of teen comedy, gangster movie and comic book superhero, a sort of 'Super Lock Stock and Three Smoking Batmans' if you like. I'll give you one bit of advice, you need to watch this film, it's cool, energetic and really slick. I can't wait for the sequel planned in 2012.