A Film Addict Reviews! Kick Ass

During the time when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was about to fully take off, superhero movies were the big money maker for studios. The issue is that R rated superhero movies don’t perform too well at the box office. Marvel tried it with a couple of their properties in the 90s and it didn’t pan out too well. This film tries to change that.

2010’s Kick Ass is about Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a high school student and overall nerd of all things, decides he should become a superhero since no one else was doing it. Little did he realize, there were and he gets caught up in a revenge plot against Frank D’amico (Mark Strong) and a father daughter superhero duo of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Mortetz).

The overall story and how it pans out is good. The twist of having them all of real people that weren’t all super powered like gods was a nice breath of fresh air to the genre. It was easy to follow along to and I was with it every step of the way. Of course that’s how it is with pretty much every superhero movie nowadays it feels like. Nothing too complicated other than your typical Good versus Evil story. I did feel like the story did revolve more around Big Daddy and Hit Girl more than Dave. It was their revenge plot and he just helped enact their revenge. He was more of a sidekick than an actual hero but it does give him the promising future of becoming an actual hero.

About the acting, all of the main actors in this were good but I think my favorite one was Nicalos Cage’s portrayal of Big Daddy. The character is just so weird that it was interesting to me. The character of Big Daddy lost everything that meant anything to him and now that he had his daughter back, he does his best to be a father and enact revenge with his daughter. They were both wronged and it just interesting that Cage portrays that relationship as weird as it is.

For the cinematography, I liked how well some of the transitions were. The director and editor seemed like they worked together close to get those transitions between certain shots. There was one where it went from Franks actual face to the drawing of his face by Big Daddy. It did a good job of drifting from scene to scene with those transitions and made it feel more cohesive as an overall film.

In regards to the R rating, it was well deserved and changed up the superhero formula. I'm sure that it may have paved the path to help Deadpool get out there in the world. The makeup designers for all the blood effects did a really well to make the injuries as believable as possible. It more than well deserves the rating it did and gives it that new the on the superhero genre in its infancy.

This film was actually fun to watch. It was made in the rare time of R-rated superhero movies and it has a nice twist on the entire genre that keeps it very grounded in reality. It gives it that feeling that there are things at stake instead of how the Marvel ones feel more god-like. The things that make this R are the stabbing, gun shot wounds, and language but it makes the film feel more like real people trying to be superheroes in reality. I liked it. Other people should watch it for the fresh take on the genre when it was just growing up before Marvel and DC oversaturated it with their movies.