Thursday 8 April 2010

Kicking the habit...


Kick Ass 2010 US
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Screening at Cineworld

There’s not a hell of a lot I can say about Kick Ass. It’s a great film offering all the visceral pleasures a film following in the wake of cinematic mayhem such as Kill Bill could be expected to offer. It has smart, well observed dialogue on the usual teen-angst one would expect but elevated to a level beyond the normal lip service usually paid in films of this type.

Plus a pieced together “homage” of a soundtrack with lots of references to previous pieces of cinematic iconography such as a parody of that “slow kettle boil” type of sound from The Dark Knight or a great dollop of the main title music to For A Few Dollars More during one of the more competent set pieces in the movie.

Also, although dressed as a simulacrum of the post-Burton Batman character, the Big Daddy role as played by Nicholas Cage seems to take great pleasure from delivering all his lines as if he’s Adam West. So good fun there then.

The film has had a lot of criticism levelled at it for the amount of violence and swearing “brought on” by an eleven year old girl in the film. Fair enough but it’s a 15 certificate so I don’t see that there’s much to complain about. You have been fairly warned (the certification is there for you on the poster) and, frankly, if you want to hear swearing and see violence which makes Kick Ass look positively tame, go catch a bus during school rush hour with real eleven year old kids... it’s far worse than anything thrown up on the screen here.

In short... Kick Ass is like watching short snippets of Tokyo Gore Police but with the sensibility of something like Ghost World thrown into the mix.

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