In Matthew Vaughn’s black action comedy “Kick-Ass,” the director of “Stardust” explores the question of what sacrifices superheroes Hit-Girl and Kick-Ass are willing to make for fame.
Come On, Hit-Girl
“Why aren’t people superheroes?” a simple schoolboy, Dave Lizewski, once asked himself. Dressed in a ridiculous diving suit bought on eBay, he ventured into the city streets. The first time didn’t go so well: half-dead from stab wounds, Dave ended up in a hospital bed and was rumored to be a gay prostitute at his school. The second time was better: after getting into a fight with street thugs, Dave not only avoided serious injuries but also became a YouTube star, as a bystander filmed the incident on their phone. “I’m Kick-Ass!” Dave blurted out into the mobile camera.
“It’s like Tarantino directed ‘Spider-Man,’” one Western critic said. And that’s pretty much it. In adapting Mark Millar’s comic (“Wanted”), director Matthew Vaughn, whose main achievement until now was the adaptation of Gaiman’s “Stardust,” suddenly went off the rails. Familiar with comic book culture not just from his younger nephew’s stories, he combined mockery of comic book geeks with a purely geeky adoration of good in leggings—and immediately found his place in the world, transforming from Guy Ritchie’s former producer into a promising, up-and-coming… well, who is Guy Ritchie anyway?
The imprudent schoolboy Kick-Ass, whose only power is the insensitivity of nerve endings after his first hospital visit, is the perfect and very lucky punching bag. This almost sadistic mockery reaches an ecstatic peak in the scenes where national news anchors proclaim the bewildered Dave as a “mysterious masked savior.” Vaughn rightly notes that in our time, when you’re not a person without a Facebook page, the usual 15 minutes of fame turns into 20 million views.
Hit-Girl Steals the Show
However, the real driving force of “Kick-Ass” is an eleven-year-old girl in a lilac wig nicknamed Hit-Girl. She saves Dave, who showed up at a drug den with a stun gun, from a fate worse than being known as a gay prostitute, and then disappears into the night like a true superheroine. Raised by ex-cop Big Daddy—Nicolas Cage, chuckling into his mustache, is in his element for the first time in a long time—on the idea of revenge against the local drug lord, she deals with assassins like The Bride, bats her eyelashes like Portman, and moves towards her goal like the Terminator. Fortunately, Vaughn financed the film from his own pocket, not the studio’s, and could afford to cut off as many limbs on screen as she needed for a truly elegant passage through the living obstacle course.
Pulling Kick-Ass out of trouble, Hit-Girl also pulls the whole film forward, which gradually transforms from a black comedy about a schoolboy in a diving suit into a bloody comic book vendetta with real superheroes at the helm. Naivety turns out to be a terrible force, and adoration takes over mockery. And yes, with great power comes great responsibility, the hero insists. But with power, it’s still more fun, Matthew Vaughn decides.