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| Released: |
2010 |
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| Genre: |
ACTION
COMIC STRIP
ADVENTURE
BLACK COMEDY
CONTROVERSIAL
COMEDY
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| Origin: |
UK/ Ireland/ Australia/ New Zealand/ US/ Canada |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
117 |
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ANTI Reviews
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| Shall I have feelings, or should I pretend to be cool? Will I seem hopelessly square if I find Kick-Ass morally reprehensible and will I appear to have missed the point? Let's say you're a big fan of the original comic book, and you think the movie does it justice. You know what? You inhabit a world I am so very not interested in. A movie camera makes a record of whatever is placed in front of it, and in this case, it shows deadly carnage dished out by an 11-year-old girl, after which an adult man brutally hammers her to within an inch of her life. Blood everywhere. Now tell me all about the context. The movie's premise is that ordinary people, including a high school kid, the 11-year-old and her father, try to become superheroes in order to punish evil men. The flaw in this premise is that the little girl does become a superhero. In one scene, she faces a hallway jammed with heavily armed gangsters and shoots, stabs and kicks them all to death, while flying through the air with such power, it's enough to make Jackie Chan take out an AARP membership. This isn't comic violence. These men, and many others in the film, are really stone-cold dead. And the 11-year-old apparently experiences no emotions about this. Many children that age would be, I dunno, affected somehow, don't you think, after killing eight or 12 men who were trying to kill her? I know, I know. This is a satire. But a satire of what? |
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| (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) |
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| Kick-Ass is violence’s answer to kiddie porn. You can see it in Hit Girl’s outfit when she cons her way past security guards — white blouse, hair in pigtails, short tartan skirt — and in the winsome way that she pleads to be inculcated into grownup excess. That pleading is the dream of every pedophile, and I wonder if Goldman paused to examine her contribution to the myth... Goldman would presumably say that it is violence, not sex, that our pre-teen heroine learns, but that is a cowardly distinction — although, to be fair, it is a cowardice shared by everyone from the M.P.A.A. down. Kick-Ass is rated R, which means that adults are free to take children to watch a child hurting adults: a neatly wrapped package, like Home Alone on growth hormones. The standard defense of such material is that we are watching “cartoon violence,” but, when filmmakers nudge a child into viewing savagery as slapstick, are we not allowing them to do what we condemn in the pornographer — that is, to coarsen and inflame?... If you find your enjoyment of Kick-Ass unclouded by such issues, good luck to you. |
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| (Anthony Lane, New Yorker) |
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| Kick-Ass could not be more calculating, or cynical... Tucked inside this flick is a relationship as kinky and potentially resonant as that between Lolita and Humbert Humbert, but you’d need a better director to pry it out. Mr. Vaughn instead just skates along, tossing in comic-book lettering and recycled action ideas and moves, including some that Quentin Tarantino exploited in the Kill Bill films after siphoning them off from the likes of Kinji Fukasaku. When Mindy shows up in a plaid kilt, knee-highs and a white shirt sure to bleed red, she isn’t only a joke about to detonate, she’s also a copy of a copy, except that the killer schoolgirl who rampaged through Mr. Fukasaku’s Battle Royale and then Kill Bill is now a prepubescent. That Ms. Moretz is a child complicates things partly because it raises the issue of agency or maybe lack thereof. And oh yeah: as it happens, it’s really unpleasant to watch as a child is even stage-punched. There’s something about the killer schoolgirl that turns some filmmakers on, and audiences, too — who knows what further dangers lurk beneath that kilt? However chastely, Mr. Vaughn plays on that unsettling image, which shores up the false impression that because Hit-Girl is a powerful figure she’s also an empowering one. |
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| (Manohla Dargis, New York Times) |
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| What can you say about a movie in which an 11-year-old girl slices and dices hordes of hoodlums while mouthing choice obscenities that might give even a truck driver pause? Welcome to Kick-Ass, the latest and most egregious example of a comic book series-turned-movie. If we keep upping – or, to be accurate, lowering – the ante like this, pretty soon we’ll be watching toddlers toting Uzis. Or haven’t I already seen that?... The sheer exuberance of blowing things up, of kicking ass, can be liberating to watch, but too often the most dubious cinematic representations of violence are given a free pass because, after all, it’s only a movie. But it’s not only a movie. If it’s OK to show preteens slicing the opposition while mouthing unprintables, then where, exactly is one supposed to draw the line? I reject the argument that, because this is a fantasy, no line need be drawn. That’s just an excuse, a commercial convenience. When a preteen Natalie Portman costarred in the sadistic action film The Professional, her presence had a smarmy-porny quality that was much remarked upon and which one can only hope the director, Luc Besson, did not intend. This is a far cry from, say Jodie Foster’s preteen hooker in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, a role, and a performance, that was entirely justified because it dealt with the consequences of exploitation rather than being a piece of exploitation in itself – which, essentially, is what Kick-Ass is. Having as its centerpiece the pint-size Hit Girl will probably be enough to make it a hit. (Clips from the film have already gone viral in the comic-geek world.) Maybe in the sequel she can spawn a brood of Hit-ettes. Critics who come out against Kick-Ass are leaving themselves open to that worst of contemporary accusations: a failure to be cool. But pretending that Kick-Ass is just another good-time comic book blowout is the greater failure. |
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| (Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor) |
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| I started hating this movie around the midpoint. And while Hit Girl's single usage of a c-word more commonly heard in Britain than in America has generated some controversy, the more pressing issue is how stupidly relentless the gore is, from beginning to end. As Vaughn himself told one interviewer, "When my daughter gets to 11, I'd far rather she had a mouth like a sewer than be a psychotic mass murderer." Yes, well, if you had to choose one, that'd be the one... Millar's storyline, adapted by Jane Goldman and director Vaughn, proceeds as if it were selling the most original concept imaginable. What if superheroes actually existed in the real world? Fine, but that was the general idea behind everything from The Incredibles to Hancock to the bit in The Dark Knight where Batman has to put up with copycat-idiots invading his turf. Nicolas Cage, who plays Big Daddy, nearly saves Kick-Ass in a key early scene in which he teaches his daughter how to take a bullet (she's wearing a vest, but it still hurts). That scene is just about right, and just about nothing else is in Kick-Ass, from Aaron Johnson's colorless interpretation of Dave to the sight of an 11-year-old getting punched and kicked and then getting bloodthirsty revenge, over and over and over. It may well be a hit, but me, I'm waiting for Iron Man 2. |
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| (Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune) |
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| Sadistic… It turned my stomach. |
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| (A.O.Scott, At The Movies) |
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| Here is a movie that parents shouldn't take their kids to see, and that is beneath anyone over 18. Garbage… Like the fanboy mentality that bullies with threatening e-mails, tweets, blog posts, and cell phone transmissions, Kick-Ass is a movie with no guts… Most wrongheaded is its insulting use of 12-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz as a gun-wielding superhero who savors the word "cock" when referring to the unexplained phallic signal the Mayor aims at the sky to summon her and her crime-fighter dad. As a bellwether of America's societal collapse, Kick-Ass tells us that the corporate raiders who have sucked the country dry are stronger than ever. |
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| (Cole Smithey, colesmithey.com) |
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| At some point it becomes exactly the big, boneheaded movie it was making fun of in the first place. |
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| (Ty Burr, Boston Globe) |
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| All of the caveats and contradictions that apply to Tarantino films apply here: One man's — or boy's — stylization is another's profane, unrelenting and tedious brutality. |
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| (Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal) |
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| One of the more morally revolting 'revenge of the nerd' teen films,... The longer it goes on, the more revolting it becomes... The exploitative shocker gets its kicks as a satire on the Spider-Man comic book film and on the Tarantino martial art/pop culture films (as it embraces wholeheartedly the superhero convention while seemingly mocking it). It runs to nowhere with its fantasy tale of a high school wimp who thrives on his super alter ego to get the pretty girl (Lyndsy Fonseca) and become famous. The Batman-like talking Cage and the foul-mouthed Moretz have a good comedy routine going in between all the gruesome violence, which is about all the titillating wit this reprehensible film can muster. |
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| (Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews) |
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| This is the ultimate fanboy product. |
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| (J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader) |
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| A film about wannabes who use attitude and bluster to emulate their inspirations, this ersatz blockbuster ends up seeming a little too much like its heroes. |
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| (Keith Phipps, AV Club) |
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| The scene stealer, Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl, is an 11 year old girl who engages in extremely explicit violence and high level coarse language who, at times, is highly “sexualised”... While I can appreciate the entertainment aspects of Kick-Ass, the fact that it is so dominated by blatant, excessive violence by teens and an 11 year old (plus the high level swearing coming from the same child) unfortunately puts this movie into the morally reprehensible category. The problem is, of course, is that this movie is going to be very popular and, when it is released on video, no doubt will be seen by teens and kids too enamoured by it to think about its moral implications. Go see something else! |
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| (Thinking Christian) |
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| I’m troubled by the fact that there are certainly some serious dangers of exploitation in Hit Girl. The slow motion action shots focus our gaze on her body, which is also the real-life body of a 12-year-old actress, Chloe Moretz. There are similar struggles in other female action heroes, like Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, or Halle Berry as Catwoman, and there are many young (looking) girls in comics and anime who don’t wear much and kill things. But as a live action movie with a real 12-year-old actress, I find it much more problematic, and I’m wrestling with identifying and articulating reasons why, beyond just the seemingly obvious “she’s young, female and vulnerable.” Is it because she’s young and supposedly without the sexuality that Angelina or Halle might command and thus enjoy in those characters? It’s certainly unsettling to think about the target audience of 18–34-year-old men gazing at Moretz and the uneven power dynamic at play there. In the trailer, we see her in a colorful wig and purple super hero suit, but she also appears in the film in the classic plaid skirt schoolgirl outfit, which by now is practically shorthand for fetishized young girl.... The fetishization of the young female body for display in Kick-Ass is undeniably exploitative. |
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| (Lindsay H. Garrison, Antenna) |
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| A dyslexic love letter to the four-color world of comics, one that attempts to both mock and celebrate the absurdities inherent in the genre's crime-fighting story... It would be one thing if Kick-Ass wanted to have its cake and eat it too, to suggest all the ways comic-book style heroics are irrational nonsense with no respect for logic or physics and then deliver comic-book-style action in which 11-year-olds can knock down men three times their size and vast numbers of henchmen can't seem to hit a single target with a hundred bullets. But worse, the cake simply isn't that good. Johnson's Dave is a maddeningly passive protagonist who disappears from long chunks of the film, surrendering the film to the supporting cast. Moretz delivers her profane musings with the kind of amoral laziness designed to make idiots smirk - Oh, look, a little kid saying filthy things!... Kick-Ass isn't just broken by its flaws: the too-long running time, the way Cage and Moretz steal the film from Johnson, the way Dave's underwritten so that there's no real spur to move him through the film, the way it suggests mass murder as the height of heroism and celebrates superior firepower as the ultimate superpower. It's flawed to start with, a hypocritical mess whose attempts to swagger turn into clumsy stumbling and whose knowing wink blinds it to its own problems. |
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| (James Rocchi, MSN Movies) |
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| Kick-Ass tries to outrage and only annoys; attempts to excite and only disgusts. Like its hero, it’s a wannabe. |
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| (Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger) |
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| Kick-Ass - based on a graphic novel - thinks it's so brave and bold. But it's more like the title character, a dweeb who just thinks he's tough... Genre fans may say the uninitiated have no business even walking in. Except a movie like this shouldn't merely piggyback on pop-cultural references, especially when its constant voice-over and leads - Cage, Mintz-Plasse and the pimply-voiced Johnson - are so arch and irritating. |
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| (Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News) |
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| In the course of this zany romp made for the high-school set, human bodies are microwaved, crushed in trash compactors, skewered, bazookaed, and burned alive. And, yes, it's comic-book violence and deliberately over the top — but since Kick-Ass' whole premise is that comic-book violence, when enacted in real life, has real consequences, it seems a strange choice to layer Tarantino-style splatter onto the Y.A.-novel setting and play the whole thing for laughs... Late in the movie, in voice-over, Dave puts a glum twist on a line from Spider-Man: "With no power comes no responsibility." If this film proposed any alternate moral vision, that line might count a sly reappropriation of the original. As the prelude to a climactic orgy of bloodletting set to the punk anthem "Bad Reputation," the joke comes off as nihilistic and flip. What do these characters consider worthy of killing and dying for? That a protagonist lacks superpowers is no reason for him to lack motivation, conviction, or purpose. That's right, I just mentioned moral vision in a review of a comic-book movie. Go ahead and call me a sententious schoolmarm (you cunts). The bone I'm picking here goes beyond the flaws of a minor movie like Kick-Ass: I'm ready to rip out the needle on the intravenous feed of comic-book superheroes that Hollywood has had us hooked up to for decades now. Some films derived from comics are excellent; some are goofy good fun; some are lousy. But why has this genre taken our popular culture hostage, and what can we do to escape? Won't some filmmaker out there put on her wet suit and come to the rescue? |
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| (Dana Stevens, Slate) |
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| A distractingly frenzied picture lacking true satiric aim, making the oncoming mess of ultraviolence more bothersome than rousing. |
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| (Brian Orndorf, brianorndorf.com) |
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| Kick-Ass panders to geeks, but it’s a cold, heartless film that doesn’t really understand what drives geekery at all. |
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| (MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher) |
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| The flashy nihilism of Kick-Ass hides just another empty action movie... Once Big Daddy and Hit Girl show up, the movie goes from semi-obnoxious piss-take on superhero conventions to full-on self-parody, a bloated, self-important action movie that has nothing valuable to say about superheroes or comic books. In its own hyperviolent, controversy-baiting way, Kick-Ass is as empty and superficial as the biggest studio production, which is no surprise coming from Millar, a writer known as much for his self-promotion as for his actual work — which tends to be condescending, flashy and exhausting... Vaughn’s visual style is colorful and energetic but ultimately as pointless as the story, and even Moretz’s foulmouthed charm eventually wears out its welcome. Kick-Ass is a movie so concerned with flattering its fanboy audience, so in love with itself and its own supposed transgressions, that it loses sight of the fact that it’s become the very thing it’s supposed to be taking down. |
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| (Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly) |
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| It’s hard not to be at least a little unsettled by the sight of a child actress slaughtering a literal army of heavily armed adults, even if they are “bad guys.” Actually, the thing that bothers me the most about the cinematic Hit Girl isn’t that she kills people — it’s that she takes such obvious pleasure in doing it. Watching Moretz smile and laugh while stabbing a drug dealer throw the heart with a giant sword or blow away dozens of D’Amico’s henchmen with a pair of guns John Woo-style, I couldn’t help but think of child soldiers in Africa who are similarly conditioned to take pleasure in killing. It’s safe to say that moviegoers wouldn’t laugh and cheer on an 11-year-old African gunman in the same way Kick-Ass encourages us to root wholeheartedly for Hit Girl without contemplating the psychological damage she’s experienced to arrive at this point. Granted, Vaughn is ostensibly making a broad comic-book satire and not a documentary about child soldiers, but a better movie would have at least shown an interest in dealing with the issues a character like Hit Girl raises. For better or for worse though, (and in my opinion anyway, it’s the latter) Kick-Ass has been constructed to shock and awe rather than to support and value deep thought. In that way, it reaffirms the juvenile label that is often ascribed to comic-books in general. That the movie ends with Dave achieving his dream of being a big-time superhero — the guy who gets the girl and gets to kick some ass (in fact, he even takes a cue from Hit Girl and kills a few evildoers as well, a development that Millar noticeably avoided) — indicates Vaughn’s willingness to pander to rather than challenge his fanboy audience. Which brings us back to where we started: Kick-Ass begins as a picture that wants to inject a dose of reality into comic-book movie conventions only to wimp out and reinforce the status quo. Is it entertaining? Sure, at times. But it’s also a woefully shallow and silly picture. |
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| (Ethan Alter, NYC FIlm Critic) |
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| The new superhero action-parody — half a scrappy sendup of the Spider-Man genre, half a desperate wannabe — indulges in all sorts of bad behavior designed to appal the guardians of culture while delighting the young, the jaded, and the smug. Fusing teen comedy, bad-boy raunch, Tarantino-style gonzo mayhem, and tossing in a bloodthirsty little girl vigilante who swears like Steve Buscemi in a Coen brothers movie, the film has its moments of high-flying, low-down style. It’s also nowhere near as subversive as it thinks it is. But don’t tell that to the fanboys; the more hot and bothered you get, the happier they’ll be. |
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| (Ty Burr, Boston Globe) |
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| It could be self-mocking or it could be mocking the very people who keep comic book stores and movies in business. The tone of this latest comic-book adaptation to reach the big screen never settles that argument and never finds its sweet spot. But then again, when you name your comic and then the movie made from it Kick-Ass, tone isn't at the top of your things-I'm-fretting-over list. An awkward blend of ultra-realistic violence, boundary-bending satire and low comedy, Mark Millar's comic becomes a Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Stardust) movie in which not everybody in the cast is on the same page, or even the right page. |
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| (Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel) |
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| Based on Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.'s Marvel/Icon comic series of the same name, Kick-Ass asks the pointy question: "Instead of reading about superheroes and watching them at the movies, why not commit fully to the dream and become a superhero?" That's a subtext-rich leaping-off place for all manner of esoteric philosophizing on the nature of heroes – super- and otherwise – and the roles they play in our lives, but Kick-Ass never really bothers to explore its own background all that deeply and instead settles for everything the title promises and less... Vaughn did a cracking good caper film with a pre-007 Daniel Craig called Layer Cake six years ago, but Kick-Ass has little of that film's heady panache and instead batters you about the face and neck with wildly over-the-top fountains of gore, bone-cracking slow-motion, and, yes, Cage, who dials his acting down a few notches from the kicky Herzogian mindfuckery of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Kick-Ass works the hero vibe sporadically, never fully functioning as either a clear-cut satire of modern hero-worship or a cogently kick-ass commentary on the same. Instead, it dwells in some morally hazy netherworld that allows it to be, technically, pretty kick-ass without being all that much fun. |
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| (Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle) |
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| Most offensively, it takes the strain of Asian pop culture centered on uniformed (and often panty-flashing) schoolgirls coolly and competently kicking the asses of grown men, which has already been filtered into American pop culture by Quentin Tarantino, and reduces it to shallow shock lines. Are we really supposed to get excited about a little girl saying words like "cock" and "douche"? Anything passed through this many filters would come out weak. Never as shocking as it thinks it is, as funny as it should be, or as engaged in cultural critique as it could be, Kick-Ass is half-assed. |
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| (Karina Longworth, Village Voice) |
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| A very dangerous film for kids and young teens. The film Kick-Ass teaches that shooting and killing people is fun and cool, and kids don't need to have Super Powers either because the kids in the film use real guns, knives, swords and more and they use it to kill people. But that's not all, the kids also use profane and obscene language in the film (like never before seen in a film that involves kids under 18), we believe this is cinematic-child abuse to the first degree. And we are holding the producers and director of Kick-Ass "publicly accountable" for the youth violence this film may create in the near future... In Kick-Ass Hollywood is clearly launching the worst obvious-assault in the history of cinema against our youth in this country. A film that clearly promotes youth-violence like we've never seen in our life time. We are calling on Parents, Teachers, Churches, Pastors, Priests, the Media, Law enforcement agencies and public officials to come against the film Kick Ass. If we do nothing now, worst films will come down the pipeline, in fact, the producers are already planning a Kick Ass Part 2. The film Kick Ass has crossed every imaginable line Hollywood has had when dealing with kids, guns and violence. Our nation's youth is already suffering from violent acts such as: bullying, teen depression, teen suicide and youth violence is already out of control in this country... And now Hollywood comes out with a film that promotes and glorifies guns and youth violence to the max. Please, say NO to Kick-Ass the movie. |
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| (Christian Newswire, USA) |
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| Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass is a film constantly at war with itself. It pertains to be a realistic story about what would happen if people decided to become masked avengers in a real big city, but it quickly gives way to implausibility and over-the-top action that would be more at home in an 80s John Woo picture. It wants you to take its story and its characters seriously enough to care about them, but it's afraid to risk alienating those who thrive on cynical detachment… The real-world implications are tossed out the window at random intervals for the sake of adolescent male fantasy and/or crowd-pleasing action spectacle for the comic book geek crowd. So, in the midst of this 'real-world comic book adventure', we have a young child who can slice and dice a dozen men while her feet barely touch the ground. We have a villain who can murder innocent bystanders in broad daylight with no consequences. We have teen superheroes driving around in a car that theoretically came from Wayne Enterprises or Stark Industries. We have an action climax that is so over-the-top goofy that it would almost be out of place in a Roger Moore James Bond adventure. It's an awkward combination as we're never entirely sure how seriously to take the various acts of shocking violence or general drama at play. |
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| (Scott Mendelson, Huffington Post) |
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| Let’s just say you shouldn’t be surprised if you let your 8-year-old see this movie and they wind up expelled from school the next day for wielding a pocket knife... Remember in Sleepy Hollow when that cute, innocent little toddler was beheaded by the Headless Horseman. You were heartbroken and bewildered that Tim Burton would allow something as tragic as a kid being murdered into his movie. Now, multiply that feeling by ten. In Kick-Ass, though the kids are a bit older, there’s absolutely nothing enjoyable about watching children getting bloodied up. One scene in particular that is still tattooed in my head is that involving an adorable girl named Hit Girl. You would think she’d be better suited sitting around with a group of other girls her age playing Barbies. The filmmakers, however, seemed to have believed otherwise as they showcase her being brutally beaten up by the film’s villain. I’m talking a royal ass whooping. Call me weak, old fashioned, anything that crosses your mind, but there’s nothing intriguing in watching a child getting the shit beat out of them, particularly a female. Moving on, when the film isn’t offending us in every way imaginable, it’s not exactly what I’d call innovative. Kudos to the filmmakers out there who’ve managed to mix copycatting with style, but Vaughn and his team of writers aren’t part of that group... Usually when I’m opposed to a picture, at least there’s the justification that it’s suited for a particular group of movie-goers. This, however, can’t be wished upon anybody. In fact, the only place I see it fit to be screened is an insane asylum and even that would be a cruel gesture. |
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| (Jared Owen, ReelFilm.com) |
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| I definitely felt afterward like my ass had been kicked, but I'd have preferred if my mind was even remotely roused at the same time. |
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| (Todd Gilchrist, Cinematical) |
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| Kick-Ass wraps itself realism, promising to show us what it's like when real people do what superheroes do, and then it turns into a cartoon... Kick-Ass has a real problem being accessible to anyone who isn’t already comic nerd. The movie’s filled with all kinds of subtle, geeky references to obscure comic knowledge which most people are simply never going to get or for that matter get interested in. Without an intimate understanding of those references, without hanging around in a comic book shop and spending a few hours studying, a lot of the movie falls flat. When not relying on comic book references, the film resorts to played out commentary on the popularity of You Tube and the world of media celebrity, again as if it’s completely unaware that this is a subject which has already been covered by other movies, and covered to death. Kick-Ass has an audience, but a limited one. If you aren’t already someone who spends days on end hanging around comic book shops, then Kick-Ass is unlikely to turn you into a fan.[ |
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| (Josh Tyler, Cinemablend) |
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| Once the novelty wears off of watching a 12-year-old girl impale adversaries while calling them "Assholes" or worse, there's nothing deeper or more meaningful within Vaughn's vision to sustain subsequent viewings. |
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| (ScreenCrave) |
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| The problem isn’t that Kick-Ass exists in a ridiculously heightened world where things come easier and feel grander than real life; it’s that the film, mainly through the protagonist’s narration, goes to great pains to emphasize that this is real life. Perhaps the most telling moment — and there is a mild but very definite spoiler ahead — is that Dave eventually admits to Katie that he’s straight and had been faking homosexuality to hang out with her. She’s upset for approximately 45 seconds before getting over it and welcoming him to her bed, after which point they screw like jackrabbits at every opportunity. Even by the loose standards of teen comedies, the ease with which Dave lands his dream girl is laughable. She’s a stand-in for every masturbatory dream ever cooked up by a high school boy, and Vaughn wants nothing more than to deliver that fantasy, free of complication, character, or charm... At every chance to be brave or interesting, the film flinches and turns into a grotesque wish-fulfillment factory that’s impossible to trust. The problem isn’t that the film diverges from the comic’s story line; it’s that those changes are psychological, not structural, ones. What starts out potentially compelling devolves into a lame joke, as resistant to feeling as its hero’s deadened nerves. |
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| (Daniel Carlson, Pajiba) |
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| The independently produced Kick-Ass, which Lionsgate will release in five weeks, feels somehow at once lean and bloated. Some of the effects underwhelm, and the whole thing has a light, cardboard-y feel. While set in New York City, much of the film was clearly shot in Toronto. And Aaron Johnson doesn't quite have the charisma to pull off the lead part of the teenager who adopts the role of a superhero, leaving something of an empty hole at the center of the film. The audience seemed with the film in places, but at times the cheers felt almost forced, as if the crowd had come out for a rollicking good time and was determined to have one no matter what. |
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| (Mark Olsen, 24 Frames) |
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| Black comedy is one thing (and I like it well done) but this is far from that. Sometimes shootings are intended to raise a laugh and sometimes the killings are in deadly earnest. As the tone swings from one to the other, the film sinks into juvenile excess that soon loses interest for all but the least demanding 16 year old. Still, the wimpy, nerdish, gormless (and horny) Dave is presented as the ultimate outsider whose very few friends are also shunned by their peers, and his journey will entertain those kids who associate with a character like this. But this isn't just Dave's journey; it is also the profoundly sad story of Damon Macready alias Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his little (but not helpless) daughter, Mindy alias Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz). I found their scenes far more engaging and often entertaining than the rest of the movie, but when the deaths aren't at all funny, tone just collapses. |
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| (Andrew L. Urban, Urban Cinefile, Australia) |
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| It's excessively violent and there's nothing particularly clever about it. It aspires to be a high camp black comedy in a Quentin Tarantino way but falls short of that. |
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| (Richard Wilkins, Nine Network, Australia) |
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| It's a disturbing step into the perverse, revelling in the corruption of an 11-year-old girl. |
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| (Deb Sorensen, Focus on the Family, Australia) |
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| Kick-Ass is a troubling movie. Although it sticks fairly closely to its comic-book source, the film can't help but be seduced by the very genre it is trying to subvert. After spending two-thirds of its running time messily and violently pointing out what a load of old nonsense superhero movies are, it then wraps up with a couple of scenes straight out of the worst of them. |
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| (Graeme Tuckett, The Dominion Post, New Zealand) |
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| Is it me, or is Kick-Ass, as they would say in California High, so yesterday? Troubled teen Dave (American-accented Aaron Johnson, lately John Lennon in Nowhere Boy) dreams of becoming a costumed superhero. Oh dear. Must we, again? Been there; done that; got the T-cape. The western world seems to have been living with wannabe comic-book crusaders for weeks, months, years... Matthew Vaughn, former Guy Ritchie producer, co-wrote and directed, and on this evidence is all flash and no flair... Cage provides one or two droll line readings but still looks like a man who realises too late he has come to the wrong fancy dress party. |
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| (Nigel Andrews, Financial Times) |
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| Bratty and unpleasant, and needs to be argued with. Chloe Moretz’s role as Hit Girl, a foul-mouthed 11 year-old vigilante in a purple wig, is ether a gift from geek heaven or a deeply icky fetish figure who should set all sorts of schoolgirl-porn alarm bells ringing: I know which side I’m on. |
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| (Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph) |
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| I don’t like the achingly adolescent, gross-out comedy style, which memorably includes a villain being microwaved to death, and don’t want to hear hardcore obscenities coming from the mouth of an 11 year-old girl, or see the same girl being punched, kicked and threatened by an adult male holding a gun. I know it’s fantasy violence and that she bloodily gives as good as she gets, but that still doesn’t make it funny. |
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| (Matthew Bond, Mail on Sunday) |
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| Much cold, unfelt violence: clearly, at the Methusalean age of 32, I fall outside the designated demographic, but then again I am old enough to remember plenty of films based on comic books that didn’t so obviously resemble instructional videos for sociopaths. |
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| (Mike McCahill, Sunday Telegraph) |
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| The violence is at about the same point on the dial as Sin City and Watchmen, though the BBFC has for some reason decided that Kick-Ass merits a "15" rather than an "18". (It's based on the comic book by Mark Millar and John S Romita Jnr). Perhaps they reasoned that the shooting and skewering and slicing are so extravagant that nobody could really take it seriously. They may be right. But you don't have to be a Daily Mail reader to feel a ripple of offence at one particularly gratuitous use of a – or rather the – four-letter word. I have no problem with swearing on screen – most of the time I barely even notice it. But I do wonder how it contributes to anything – fun, credibility, the tattered remains of our innocence – to have an 11-year-old girl address a bunch of men she's never met before as "c**ts". |
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| (Anthony Quinn, Independent) |
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| This film is notable for the box-office boosting controversy over its 15 certificate and scenes of extreme violence involving an abused (by her father) and subtly sexualized 12- year-old girl. Many won’t see it, but in the post script, when Hit Girl is adopted by her father’s former police buddy, the narrator uses the term ‘moved in with’ rather than ‘adopted by’. Moreover, Dave’s girlfriend, a serious student still living at home, is also surprisingly sexually aggressive, with one sex scene in particular looking like it belongs in another film. Apologists argue that the violence is ‘cartoon violence’ and the characters come from a comic book, however little known. But Vaughn intentionally mixes Aaron’s very realistic coming-of-age story with the cartoon violence, blurring the lines. People who are brutally beaten and shot walk away unharmed, concealing the real consequences of violence. The script’s frequent attempts at wit and humour lead to disturbing incongruities where a ‘good’ character is being burnt alive and the audience is giggling. Though the film is never boring and certainly action-packed, there’s some sloppy writing. What professional superheroes would ever reveal their home address to someone they barely know and have reason to suspect is being followed by the bad guys? Having discovered the location, why would the bad guys leave all the expensive weapons? The big problem with Kick-Ass is that for all its claims to originality, there’s no disguising the fact that it’s not only another (and inferior) super-hero movie like Spider Man, it’s also another vigilante movie. It’s Death Wish with a father-daughter team instead of a revenge minded lone husband/father or a lone fiancee (The Brave One) or an old man (Harry Brown) or the son of a murdered father (Wanted), to name a few. |
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| (Joyce Glasser, Mature Times) |
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| In his 1944 essay, Orwell, in switching from his classic comparison of the very Englsh tale of the gentleman thief A.J.Raffles to the violently American No Orchids for Miss Blandish, remarked, somewhat excessively: “Now for a header into the cesspool.” After the ersatz Kick-Ass I’m reminded of an old joke about Hitler trying to revive pubic morale in the last days of the Third Reich through a crash programme of turning excrement into butter. Eventually, his scientists produce a substance that has the appearance of butter and the nutrient qualities of butter. “So vot is the problem?” a furious Hitler demands. “Vell, mein Fuhrer,” says an anxious scientist, “it still smells and tastes just like shit.” |
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| (Philip French, Observer) |
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| One of the most disturbing films I have ever seen. It was a relentless assault on the senses: horrifically, graphically and senselessly violent, and so wrong, wrong, wrong in its vile and exploitative portrayal of a prepubescent girl as a foul mouthed, knowing woman of four times her years. The contrast between the adult content and the adolescent interests of the storyline said 'voyeurism', pure and simple. WHAT was the British Board of Film Classification thinking when they rated it 15? |
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| (Almam, email to Observer Online) |
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| The sexual overtones about an 11 year old make me want to drag the director out back and show him what's funny about beating up children and dressing them in sexy outfits. |
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| (headly66, IMDB user from New Jersey) |
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| Chances are that you'll only enjoy this sorry excuse for a "movie" if you are no older than 12 years old or have a thing for a 11 year old girl dressing up like a cheap hooker, from the bad make-up to the awful purple wig. This "movie" sucks from beginning to end, a complete waste of nearly 2 hours of your life… If you like watching badly acted, flawed abominations that call themselves "movies" than this will be right up your street. If however you actually have a brain or can't stand child exploitation for cheap "laughs" you'd probably rather kick your own ass than watch this "movie"! |
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| (djsneakypeaky, IMDB user from United Kingdom) |
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| The underlying idea that it is somehow funny to watch a ten year old girl execute people is just plain sick. |
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| (amajuscule, IMDB user from Canada) |
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| It was really only a matter of time. The culmination of decades of brainwashing, dumbing down and awful, awful artistry have resulted in Kick Ass… The violence in this film is so gratuitous, so disturbing, especially because it involved such a young girl, that it really wouldn't be any more offensive if the preteen actress was wandering around naked and having sex with adults, instead of gleefully murdering them. If there is any justice in this world, Kick Ass will continue to under perform at the box office. The less money it makes, the better. |
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| (donjeffries, IMDB user from United States) |
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| This movie shows you a lot of cruel torture scenes that end up with the victim killed violently. These scenes made me sick and I had to walk out of the movie because I was so disgusted. |
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| (PeteRoy, IMDB user from Tel-Aviv, Israel) |
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| The violence here ("casual slaughter" is a better term for it) was repugnant in its aim to excite and delight, and more than a little disturbing to watch as the audience hoots along with each 'kill'. Movies can be a great communal experience, but I can't recall a cinema experience where I have felt so depressingly cut off from my fellow human beings (a generous use of the term). I suppose we are supposed to applaud the audaciousness and black comedy of a preteen girl slicing off bad men's legs and shooting them through the head, but to me it reeked of filmmakers desperately trying to find new and novel ways to hype audiences up. |
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| (a_mcness, IMDB user from Australia) |
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| Do we want to see more Columbines in this country? If your answer "yes" to the question then keep making movies (and computer games too) like this one and tell kids it's o.k. to kill people (killing itself is enough brutal but they even choose more disgusting ways to do that in this movie) revenge, guns, blood is good, buying guns online easy, there is no justice out there so get your toys (guns) and go after other people and kill them. And then we are wondering how Columbine or other teenage mass murdering happened in this country? As I walked out this movie i felt very sad to see all those young kids who were in the movie theater to see this movie. |
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| (cenker2000, IMDB user from United States) |
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| I was thoroughly disgusted by my fellow movie goers for liking this movie. If you are looking for a Tarantino style in this movie, you are not going to get it. There is nothing witty in the plot or the dialogue in this entire movie. It all boils down to the almost sadistic desire to show for example an 11 year old cutting off a man's legs and then yelling "cool" while you shake your head in dismay as the audience goes wild. This movie doesn't have a shred of intellect present in it and it made me wonder if this movie was genuinely marketed for tween audience who sneak into R rated movies. |
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| (eaglestrike45, IMDB user) |
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| I have never been so offended by a film. I do not enjoy children cutting people's throats being shot, punched in the face or choked. Yeh it's a parody - whatever, scenes of graphic violence involving a child who has basically been trained to be the ultimate child soldier by her deranged father are NOT funny. Doesn't matter how much the director is winking at the camera. There are child soldiers in the real world. Of course they don't get to live happily ever after. They are f****d. Their lives ruined. In the theatre I watched this there was silence throughout the film, apart from my girlfriend sobbing at times - so disturbed was she by the events unfolding. Just a warning to those of you who have not been totally desensitised to amoral movie violence. |
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| (heebeegeebee, IMDB user from United Kingdom) |
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| Here are the reasons that first came to mind as to why this movie is a glittering jewel of everything that is wrong with popular culture. 1) Needless, unentertaining, uncreative and horribly graphic violence. 2) Needless, pathetic-attempts-at-being-funny sexual content. 3) Needless, excessive, pathetic-attempts-at-being-funny language (especially coming from a little girl). 4) Shallow, flimsy, and pathetically strung-together plot. 5) Next-to-zero character development. Oh, my goodness... it is painful just to try and remember this film. I feel ashamed that Nicolas Cage would be in this movie. I find the lack of any redeeming value in this movie to be staggering. I swear that my grades have dropped just because of the brain cells killed during the watching of this movie. |
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| (davidroberson3, IMDB user from United States) |
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| Pretty depressing, and this has lots to say about the hopelessness of our "civilisation". It's funny if you have the humour of a sociopathic 13-year old boy from New Jersey. And it is precisely this demographic that should be kept away from films like this at all costs. Hollywood continues with its campaign to completely erode humane values and de-sensitize people to violence and torture. How come full-on sex scenes including genitals are taboo, but scenes of gory murder and torture are now so commonplace that even children can participate? How did we get here? Thuggish violence and shootings in schools by under-age psychopaths can be expected to continue with increased regularity thanks to films like this. |
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| (SkullRattler, IMDB user from United Kingdom) |
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| It’s a shame that Americans have become so desensitized that we find it not only OK to have children murdering people in movies, but also cheering it on. It’s really disturbing. |
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| (jenb2525, IMDB user from United States) |
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