Never mind Kicking-Ass, Vaughn's latest is a kicking; screaming; thrashing assault on the senses which miraculously happens to be both pleasing and rather substantial.

Rating: 6/10 (15 March 2011)

Matthew Vaughn's outlandish and somewhat squeamish 2010 film Kick-Ass makes the grade for sheer energy and unabashed outlandishness, a near-on two hour assault through all things in bad taste and devilishly daring content, delivered through this somewhat perverse filter of dark reds; purples; light greens accompanied by streaks of yellows as well as coldly metallic whites blended with grey. The film isn't so much about the things that it wants to say as much as it is the way in which it goes about saying them, something that dogs the film come the final act but until then remains an unabashed and full on blackly comedic onslaught of sadistic gangsters; disgruntled young men; elusive young women; sickly amusing juxtapositions and a whole lot of off-the-cusp content.
Kick-Ass tells the tale of two males, one coming out of adolescence as his high-school days fritter away and his life situation appears to get worse by the day; the other a much older man, a discontent ex-cop whom was wrongfully imprisoned and is now seeking revenge in the harsh, unforgiving, intimidating basin that is modern day New York City. The adolescent is David Lizewski (Johnson), a boy living with his father following his mother's passing, not in control of his hormones and mostly living a self-identified pathetic existence consisting of being rolled over by bullies; rejected by girls, particularly young Katie (Fonseca), and mixing it with his teen-aged friends at internet cafés and comic book shops. We observe him during a tracking shot down a school corridor, in slow motion, which accentuates their characteristics and place in life. They look around uneasily at their surroundings, sport nervous smiles which feign confidence and look a little weedy. His point of attack is generically reminiscent to that of your more bog-standard high-school comedy, during which the presence of Christopher Mintz-Plasse's Chris D'Amico, son of a local mafia kingpin, is encompassed with his own, more exquisite introduction seeing him step out of a limousine: he's been here before in 2007's Superbad, and consequently has his star-system reputation toyed with by the film as being a veteran to all this content.
David shares some duality with a certain Damon Macready, played by Nicolas Cage. Macready cuts an odd figure, sporting prim glasses and a tall figure; his big, bushy moustache standing him out amidst proceedings as he encourages young daughter Mindy (Moretz) to learn the art of hand to hand combat via gunshots to well protected chests; pop quizzes on heavy artillery and lessons in using knifes. She goes on to become the purple-haired; skirt wearing; ninja weapon wielding Hit-Girl, one of the more eye-opening characters from a film from recent years. Both men fight a system, a large governing body of people too corrupt to especially care for the results of their actions, the system failing to clean up the neighbourhood which Dave inhabits, as well as incorrectly sentencing MacReady to a stretch in prison. When we discover what it is Macready is fighting for, in an affecting scene, Vaughn constructs a particular character's epiphany in discovering the true extent to what happened as if inadvertently uncovering a serial killer's lair, complete with mandatory diary full of disdain and hatred, and the desired reaction is accomplished.
The nature of Dave's existence pushes him to order a costume over the Internet so as to enable him to go out and test a thesis he himself concocted more broadly linked to that of why it is super-heroes do not exist. The anger, dishevelment and frustrations born out of the hand life has dealt young Dave sees him long to escape such a persona, or existence, and venture out into another one: one is toothless and somewhat of a target to those whom prey; the other, complete with costume, a mysterious, overly bold, anonymous and quite violent creation born out of his situation in life. We feel Dave is at rock bottom and when he's on the roof top of a five story building practising leaping from top-to-top, before urgently pulling out of the final jump, we do still feel that that's a suicide attempt which doesn't materialise more than a potential vigilante practising super-heroism. Eventually, his popularity with the public sees his fame sky-rocket; his first taste at super-heroism sees him fail overall but his actions get him closer to Katie, so he continues.
Later on, their framework encompasses the realising of the importance of sticking to one's true identity; Dave coming to reject his online, super-hero, 'fake' persona as Katie herself realises the shallowness of her own attitudes in initially deducing Dave to be 'of an ilk', before coming round to seeing what sort of guy he is after naturally bonding with him. The argument that it is a character piece and not an adolescent display of gratuity continues when we recall the early, slow track of Dave-plus-friends and match that up beside and a later composition of Dave looking beaten; bloodied; grubbier and less than smart following the plodding through his dangerous misadventure.
Vaughn's film is a delicate balance of coming of age with the tale of full on revenge against a system, but to say it goes about exploring its themes, ideas and stories in a delicate manner would be wholly misleading; the film a jaunty and engrossing enough action/comedy tackling notions of one's identity in a contemporary, digitally driven universe and encompassing a fair deal of characterisation in the process, resulting in a film not really as substantial nor as adventurous as either of Vaughn's previous two pieces, but regardless something with the ability to stand on its own. He keeps both strands moving along at equal pace, Cage's is more engrossing; the film paying sly hint to knowing so when it utilises the concoction of Hit-Girl to drive the film's final act on behalf of Cage's plight. Moral panics and general outrage aside, Kick-Ass is an engrossing and substantial enough film to get involved in.