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| Hit Girl may be the coolest assassin since Jules in Pulp Fiction. If you get a chance to wager on this year’s hot Halloween costume, bet the farm on her. She’s the baddest, funniest, killingest and coolest female superhero ever. (Sorry, Elektra.) She’s so beyond awesome that once we’ve seen what she can do, she hijacks the whole movie. Director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) plays coy with her but eventually delivers with three of the most brilliantly executed (and I do mean executed) attack scenes of recent years. |
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| (Kyle Smith, New York Post) |
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| It brings together several popular strains of contemporary moviemaking and combines them into one big, shameless, audacious, compulsively watchable, irresistibly likable piece of pure entertainment. |
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| (Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle ) |
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| Kick-Ass moves with such bloody assurance that you'd be forgiven for not seeing how smart it is. But smart it is. Smart, important and deadly. |
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| (Richard Corliss, Time) |
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| Kick-Ass has punk energy, ace action moves, and a winning sense of absurdist fun. |
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| (Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer) |
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| This shrewd mixture of slick comic-book mayhem, unmistakable sweetness and ear-splitting profanity is poised to be a popular culture phenomenon because of its exact sense of the fantasies of the young male fanboy population. |
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| (Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times) |
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| Matthew Vaughn lovingly brings the comic book series to the big screen with an unabashed geekiness that will delight anyone who has a favorite superhero. |
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| (Jen Yamato, Movies.com) |
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| Kick-Ass offers some genuinely clever observations about the creation of celebrity in a world where viral video clips and latenight talkshow quips can turn attention seekers into overnight sensations - and inadvertent role models. |
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| (Joe Leydon, Variety) |
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| Kick-Ass expertly blends side-splitting humor with bone-shattering action and the result is something endlessly entertaining. It will do for superheroes what Zombieland did for the undead. |
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| (Brian Salisbury, Hollywood.com) |
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| Hit-Girl owns this film like she would own your ass if you ever stepped to her. |
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| (Chris Laverty, Clothes on Film) |
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| An incredibly fun time at the movies, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve had this much fun at a movie. It’s a rockin’ good ride, and I look forward to seeing it again. This is a must-see! |
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| (Chris Bumbray, Jo Blo’s Movie Emporium) |
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| Kick Ass was one of my most anticipated films to see this year, and it was worth the wait. A mix of both Spider-Man and Kill Bill, it is everything I wanted and then some. I’ve heard people talk about wanting there to be more of a sense of escapism in these genre films, and I think Kick-Ass is probably the best example of that at the moment. It’s funny, violent, and entertaining. Rest Assured that when the film is released nationwide on April 16th, I will be watching it again. |
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| (Dustin, geekadelphia.com) |
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| At its most elemental level, it's tremendously exciting to see a superhero flick that embraces unadulterated bloodshed and violence while promoting the idea that deranged destruction can happily co-exist with responsible hero-hood. It's a movie that gleefully dances on the grave of political correctness, readily serving up a young girl as a foul-mouthed, highly-trained assassin named Hit-Girl, played by Chloe Moretz. She is an action star for the ages. Yet it's also a movie that loses focus as we gradually come to appreciate that the supporting characters are far most interesting than the leads. |
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| (Peter Martin, Twitch) |
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| I've been thinking about what makes Kick-Ass the single best Western action film I've seen in maybe a decade and it all comes down to director Matthew Vaughn's impeccable sense of pacing. Too many crazy action films these days run out of steam by about the halfway mark; you get the best stuff in the first two acts and then act three turns into a slog of tying up story ends and wrapping up character arcs that were stunted beforehand. Vaughn doesn't just keep the pace up throughout the entire film, he keeps building the pace so that the final action scenes are the biggest, craziest and most fun... Kick-Ass is a movie that will have you on your feet, cheering your fucking guts out. |
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| (Devin Faraci, chud.com) |
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| Kick-Ass is what Spider-Man would have looked like if it was directed by Quentin Tarantino using the cast of Spy Kids. In other words, pure awesome. |
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| (Anders Wotzke, cutprintreview.com) |
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| Even without seeing any others I'm tempted to guess that Kick-Ass is the best comic book movie of 2010, and in some respects it's more consistently entertaining than even The Dark Knight. |
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| (Mark Pickavance, Den of Geek) |
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| A fanboy’s kick-ass wet dream of a movie that could be a surprise Spring smash... Vaughn delivers one rollicking and raucous set piece after another but never loses sight of the fun. Kick-Ass has it all, the triumphant comic book movie fans have been waiting for with non-stop excitement, laughs, heart, originality and total entertainment. Move over Iron Man. There’s a new superhero in town and his name is Kick-Ass. |
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| (Pete Hammond, Box Office) |
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| A pitch-perfect send-up of everything that is characteristic of superhero films. It is versed enough to cite convention, but clever enough to find the humor in the genre’s absurdity. And the biggest advantage Kick-Ass has in the parody department is that it is unrelentingly entertaining. It seems that in the last few years, terrible parodies have made undeserved fortunes at the box office while better-crafted entries have gone largely unseen. Kick-Ass, on the other hand, has all the necessary components to clean up at the box office and be well deserving of its success. |
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| (Brian Salisbury, Hollywood.com) |
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| Like the most recent Mark Millar adaptation, Wanted, Kick-Ass is vulgar and wanton in its relentless ability to kill minor characters in creative ways. Many people die in this movie — many at the hands of the young, purple-haired Hit Girl — and every one of them is interesting and fun to watch. It’s also got that dark humor that makes Millar such an interesting read, which once again translates wonderfully to the screen. What differentiates Kick-Ass though, is the high irreverence and electric, neon infusion of fun. Sure, it is violent, it is vulgar and the story is off-the-walls at times. But in the end, Kick-Ass is a relentlessly fun R-rated movie experience. The performances ooze with personality, the violence is inventive, the soundtrack is a kick in the pants and the entire film swaggers in, knocks you around, and leaves you feeling violated — in a good way. Sure, this movie can’t see through walls, but it just might kick your ass. |
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| (Neil Miller, filmschoolrejects.com) |
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| Can this genre make fresh inroads? Kick-Ass proposes an answer of sorts through a marriage of Disney Channel wholesomeness and the kind of foul-mouth dialogue and bloodletting that would make Tarantino proud. |
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| (Patrick Kolan, IGN Movies, Australia) |
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| Kick-Ass is great fun... an hilariously over-the-top action flick that has 'cult classic' written all over it. Brilliant! |
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| (Mark Adams, Sunday Mirror) |
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| A ridiculously entertaining, perfectly paced, ultra-violent cinematic rush that kicks the places other movies struggle to reach. |
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| (Chris Hewitt, Empire) |
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| Hit-Girl’s entrance, fuck it, every scene she's in, is jaw-droppingly awesome. Watching her rip through baddies with the dexterity of a world class conductor, in some of the finest action scenes you'll ever see, may be the most fun you'll have had in a cinema for a decade. |
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| (Owen Nicholls, New Musical Express) |
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| A triumph of wit, energy and cartoonish but undeniably visceral violence... Kick-Ass succinctly deflates Spider-Man style solemnity: “With no power comes no responsibility.” It is blissfully, outrageously funny. |
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| (Nick Curtis, Evening Standard) |
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| The comic-book blockbuster is reinvented completely in Kick-Ass, a movie that is both piquantly self-satirising and peerlessly entertaining. Here, the innermost desires of introverted comic nerds become reality when an amiable teen, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), dons a green suit, calls himself Kick-Ass, and begins to fight crime. The results are initially messy (Dave ends up in hospital), but with the help of two genuine masked avengers — Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz) — Dave soon finds himself caught up in an increasingly violent blood feud with mob boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong). Delivering on the promise of his previous Layer Cake, the director and co-writer Vaughn proves himself a masterful action film-maker. There are scenes, mostly involving Moretz’s 11-year-old uber-killer Hit-Girl, that are the most propulsive committed to film since the first Matrix movie, or Die Hard, or even early John Woo. Morally, Kick-Ass tends to drift into the abyss, and certainly the pig-tailed sexy-assassin poses of Hit-Girl are problematic. But the film’s energetic momentum and sheer force of high-octane enjoyment silences objections. |
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| (Kevin Maher, Times) |
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| Kick-Ass is so audacious in every way possible and a film that after seeing I immediately wanted to both see it again and tell people to go and see it. |
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| (Craig Skinner, heyuguys.co.uk) |
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| A superhero movie unlike any that has gone before. A spectacular flight of fancy that takes genre conventions and turns them on their head. One that pays tribute to the rich history of the comic book movie, and yet in the process manages to create something wholly fresh and original. And quite possibly the benchmark against which future such efforts will be measured. |
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| (Chris Tilly, IGN UK) |
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| A boundary-pushing comedy that doesn't give a monkey's who it offends, launching an unapologetic roundhouse kick into Middle England's outraged, spluttering face. But more intelligent cinema-goers - or perhaps just those who like their bloodshed well done - will love every minute, relishing the jet-black humour and drinking in the Tom And Jerry-style violence. |
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| (David Edwards, Daily Mirror) |
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| Vaughn's witty verve, instinctive knack for bizarre counterpoint and sheer bravado speed the cartoon violence towards a manic action climax. |
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| (Alan Jones, Radio Times) |
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| Amazing, gory and immersive fight scenes; punchy, side-splitting dialogue; excellent acting and utter originality are just a few of the good things about this film. |
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| (Luke Edwards, FHM) |
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| It constantly and wittily skewers the superhero genre; and yet at the same time, it's an exhilarating example of it. |
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| (Seb Patrick, Film4) |
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| Quite simply the most successful comic adaptation to date, a flawless take on the rebellious punk sensibilities of the source. |
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| (Jordan Farley, SFX Magazine) |
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| Kick-Ass's punk rock full-throttle approach lends it a freshness and vigour that elevates it from the crowd. |
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| (Simon Reynolds, Digital Spy) |
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| A ridiculously entertaining, perfectly paced, ultra-violent cinematic rush that kicks the places other movies struggle to reach. |
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| (Chris Hewitt, Empire) |
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| Fantastically anarchic and gloriously irresponsible: a surrealist fantasy of adolescent wish-fulfilment and fear, sploshed on to the screen in poster-paint colours... In its monumentally mad and addled |
| way, Kick-Ass might even be saying something about the ethics of civilians "having a go" at criminals, about teenagers getting bullied and about our brave new world of homemade internet celebrity. And between them, Vaughn and Goldman show a genius for incorrectness and pure provocation: an entire edition or perhaps an entire series of Radio 4's Moral Maze might have to be devoted to the extraordinary action sequence in which a prepubescent superheroine called Hit Girl, in mask and purple wig, boldly denounces a dozen bad guys with the c-word before letting them have it with the gleaming "Benchmade model-42 butterfly knife" she has just got from her adoring father for her 11th birthday. And all this to a cranked-up version of the Banana Splits theme tune on the soundtrack. What I experienced was not so much a moral panic, as a full-scale gibbering fit in the stalls... Perhaps I shouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I did: but with more energy and satire and craziness in its lycra-gloved little finger than other films have everywhere else, Kick-Ass is all pleasure and no guilt. |
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| (Peter Bradshaw, Guardian) |
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| Thirteen-year-old Chloe [Moretz] is the most fantastic bundle of energy to hit the screen since Jodie Foster came to our full attention in Scorsese's masterpiece Taxi Driver. Watching her, well, kick-ass, and more, in the exhilarating movie Kick-Ass just bowled me over. She steals every scene she's in, whether it's with Nicolas Cage (who plays her dad in the film) or Kick-Ass's smart leading man Aaron Johnson. I cheered everytime she appeared on screen, I cheered everytime she opened her mouth and out spewed four-letter words that would shock the bejeezus out of your aged Aunt Fanny and I cheered everytime she kicked ass... It's a movie that's beyond cool and I hope Vaughn and Goldman are thinking about Kick-Ass 2. |
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| (Baz Bamigboye, Daily Mail) |
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| You leave the cinema afflicted with hysteria, having laughed too much at some very twisted material. |
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| (Kate Muir, Times) |
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| The team behind Stardust brings us the superhero movie we always wanted: brazen, raucous and without a single politically correct moment from start to finish. And yes, it's both wildly rude and great |
| fun. |
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| (Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall) |
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| This is... so clearly a comic-book universe that you’d have to be pretty determined to be offended. |
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| (Cosmo Landesman, Sunday Times) |
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| The excellent script (co-written by Jane Goldman) is packed with quotable lines and laugh-out-loud moments and even manages to work in a subtle message about helping those in need. In addition, the film has a terrific soundtrack and the colourful production design is extremely impressive, while the direction is consistently inventive, particularly during the fight scenes. Kick-Ass is a hugely enjoyable, brilliantly directed comic book flick that's both genuinely thrilling and laugh-out-loud funny. In short, Kick-Ass kicks ass. |
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| (Matthew Turner, ViewLondon) |
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| It’s a fun movie to watch because it has everything a guy like me looks for in a movie: action, laughs, profanity, a little gore and a little sexuality. For those who are repulsed by the idea of a 13-year-old girl using the phrase “Hello c*nts!” before promptly cutting someone’s leg off, you should probably not be visiting this website – I hear www.mylittlepony.com features none of that stuff… but I can’t guarantee it. |
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| (Mahmoud El-Azzeh, Movie Moron) |
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| I'm not exaggerating when I say that Kick-Ass is the most entertaining film I have ever seen. Not only is it top-quality entertainment, on every level it's a wonderful piece of cinema. My only regret upon reviewing Kick-Ass is that convention limits me to giving it only five stars. |
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| (James Audley, Cherwell, Oxford student newspaper) |
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