The surRealist Review: Kick-Ass

Nic Cage has channelled the non-dead spirit of William Shatner and somehow has become a sociopathic, pseudo-serial killer dad who dresses like Batman!

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I had to get that out. Let’s back up a few steps and I’ll start over. I watched the movie “Kick-Ass” a couple weeks back. I have thoughts.

I read the graphic novel about a year or so back. I wasn’t too terribly impressed though. It felt rushed and honestly it was just bit uncomfortable to read. Mainly for the fact that it went way too heavy with the teenage stupidity and awkwardness. Not to mention that all the characters were irredeemably unlikable in my eyes. Also the use of gore and brutality felt forced. Like the book was trying to rub your nose in it. There’s nothing wrong with good ol’ gore and violence, but when it feels like the comic is saying “Hey, hey look at this! This is awesome and gross right? Right? Come on! Love me for making you have a gut reaction to something visceral!”, I just roll my eyes.

So you can see my reluctance to check out the movie. But I wanted to engage in some mindless entertainment and I was mildly curious. Plus, hey, Nic Cage. Can’t be all bad right? I popped it on.

Welcome to the real-world. Where life sucks, people with money and guns and power trample all over the people without, US cities are in fact rather dirty looking, and Nic Cage is a badass vigilante who says “gosh” a lot.

There’s no surprises here. This geeky kid Dave just wants to feel special. So he puts on a mask and a scuba suit and plays superhero in training until deciding to put a stop to some neighborhood thugs.

Oh they best the crap out of him.

But from the ashes and congealed blood rose a poor man’s Wolverine! A patchwork Frankenstein of metal plates, metal reinforced bones, and pain dampening nerve damage, Dave, or Kick-Ass as he referred to himself, forged ahead undaunted (except by the hospital stay) and quickly became an internet spectacle and someone for the helpless to call upon.

Of course everything went to pot pretty quick when he found himself tripping into the business of the local organized crime outfit and the entrance of who should have been the star of this romp; Nic Cage.

At first I thought that maybe the studio had shot Nic up with some industrial strength tranquilizers and that was why he wasn’t Cagin’ it up. But the further I got into “Kick-Ass” the more I realize he was playing it subtle. See Nic Cage isn’t playing Nic Cage in this. He’s playing a doting father who strikes you as the kind of personality you’d see in a serial killer. He’s all too happy doing what he’s doing. Hot chocolate in front of his wall o’ guns. Browsing ebay with his daughter to look for new weaponry. Training her to take a bullet. All the while with a smile on his face, a chipper inflection to his voice, and nothing but encouraging words. Then he puts on a Batman outfit, breaks necks, snipes drug dealers, and sets mob warehouses on fire. While talking an awful lot like William Shatner. I don’t know if it’s beautiful, but it’s definitely a sight to behold.

Despite going into this movie expecting not to like it, the longer I watched the more invested in the characters I became. Unlike the comic, I actually started to like Dave/Kick-Ass. I actually started to like the story. They had deviated just fa enough away from the source material, that all the issues I had with the comic, were no longer issues. It was in fact a pretty kick ass movie. Combining both the real world grittiness of normal people attempting to be different kinds of vigilantes along with the absolute ridiculousness one would expect from people taking their superhero cues from mainstream comic industry offerings.

Plus, I’m going to tell you flat out this movie has the absolute best use out of a high-tech jetpack, and the some of the best utilization of the Chekov’s Gun trope in the form of a reoccurring bazooka.

All of this pretty much equals out to one very important thing; this movie had fun with itself. It saw its entire self as one big amusement park ride, and just shamelessly did everything it wanted to do, and in the end it worked. Plus, it basically told a Spider-Man esque, from geek to snarky hero story way better than any of the Spider-Man movies did.

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