Don't believe the hype.

Rating: 4/10 (8 April 2010)

Don't believe the hype. The only things you haven't seen here before are a pretty funny Adam West impression from Cage, and the sight of an eleven year old girl killing henchmen (if that does it for you). The first hour is some pretty lame high-school American-Pie/Superbad-ish comedy that segues into some pretty ill-natured and nasty-edged violence (that is rarely justified). The film never really has the satirical bite it promises and it ends up becoming a pretty standard action movie heavily reliant on guns (I thought this was supposed to be a super-hero movie?!). It also quickly rejects its "real world – real physics" premise pretty quickly, which blunts the entire point of the film.
By far the best thing about the film is the action scenes - which are pretty well made and fairly originally shot - though they tend to leave a bit of a bad taste in the mouth, owing to the fact there aren't any really likable characters in the film and the whole plot is pretty morally bankrupt. There is also a hugely uncomfortable scene with Hit- Girl in a school uniform which makes you feel like you've stumbled across an illegal website.
In the end the film feels far too much like a too many other movies (though obviously genre references are essential) to have much of it's own identity (Watchmen, Spiderman, Superbad, Kill Bill, etc.) It's also not nearly funny enough to be a comedy - shoot me down but I honestly found the underrated Mystery Men funnier, and that was over ten years ago!
I wasn't excited about this film until seeing the reviews, and having seen it, I'm now pretty confident that the fawning reviews of the UK media (it came out here a few weeks before US) have been heavily influenced by editors insistent on giving a film with so much UK talent (star, director, writer etc) good reviews. It all smacks of back- scratching/palm greasing. This is nowhere near a five star film, and I'm keeping my hopes up that the upcoming "Defendor" better delivers on the promise of a similar premise.