April 26, 2010
Kick Ass was brilliant! Incredibly violent in quite a shocking and unexpected way (even though someone had already warned me that there was no holding back on the brutality and blood lust), laugh out loud funny, not only for some of the perfectly timed one-liners, but also for the gut wrenching implausibility of the stunts and the ludicrous character mockery.
And oh boy is that Aarron Johnson kid cute! I can quite see how his forty something womanfriend would be keen to snap him up and create perfectly beautiful and talented children together. I am sure there must be more to it than an attraction to perfect bone structure and puppy dog eyes, oh, and some serious acting talent… but that has to help!
The war mongering, potty mouthed, gun toting, switchblade hurling ten year old girlwarrior is dynamite on screen, and even when you do a body count and realise that she's taken out more baddies than she can count on her still juvenile little fingers and toes, you still feel compassion for the kid within.
The super bad guys are proper comic book nasty, with not a hint of human emotion, which all fits perfectly with the surreal, fantasy meets reality drama of the film. When they get their body parts chopped off, their throats cut and are blown from great heights with a short range missile, designed to take out tanks, you feel that justice has been duly wrought upon evil in the world.
Amidst all the gratuitous violence, which is somehow palatable because it is taken to such extremes of fictionalisation, there comes a moment of heart wrenching reality. As the uber villain, the arch nemesis of the small female heroine, hurls her tiny frame around his plush penthouse office, and finally slams her body onto a plate glass table and punches the crap out of her, the horror of this grown man, hell bent on inflicting ultimate pain on girl a fraction his size - albeit that she has the same revenge driven intent to kill - comes rushing off the screen to hit the audience with about the same impact as each fist he lays into her face. I don't think I was the only one in the room who stopped smiling at that point, just for a second.
Then Kick Ass, clad in his farcical, scuba diver super hero outfit, bursts through the door with a bazooka gun on one shoulder, and delivers a line so cheesily clad in cliché, that the momentary reality check is dispelled and the crazy cartoonery continues. Anyway - see it. It's great.
And oh boy is that Aarron Johnson kid cute! I can quite see how his forty something womanfriend would be keen to snap him up and create perfectly beautiful and talented children together. I am sure there must be more to it than an attraction to perfect bone structure and puppy dog eyes, oh, and some serious acting talent… but that has to help!
The war mongering, potty mouthed, gun toting, switchblade hurling ten year old girlwarrior is dynamite on screen, and even when you do a body count and realise that she's taken out more baddies than she can count on her still juvenile little fingers and toes, you still feel compassion for the kid within.
The super bad guys are proper comic book nasty, with not a hint of human emotion, which all fits perfectly with the surreal, fantasy meets reality drama of the film. When they get their body parts chopped off, their throats cut and are blown from great heights with a short range missile, designed to take out tanks, you feel that justice has been duly wrought upon evil in the world.
Amidst all the gratuitous violence, which is somehow palatable because it is taken to such extremes of fictionalisation, there comes a moment of heart wrenching reality. As the uber villain, the arch nemesis of the small female heroine, hurls her tiny frame around his plush penthouse office, and finally slams her body onto a plate glass table and punches the crap out of her, the horror of this grown man, hell bent on inflicting ultimate pain on girl a fraction his size - albeit that she has the same revenge driven intent to kill - comes rushing off the screen to hit the audience with about the same impact as each fist he lays into her face. I don't think I was the only one in the room who stopped smiling at that point, just for a second.
Then Kick Ass, clad in his farcical, scuba diver super hero outfit, bursts through the door with a bazooka gun on one shoulder, and delivers a line so cheesily clad in cliché, that the momentary reality check is dispelled and the crazy cartoonery continues. Anyway - see it. It's great.