'Kick-Ass' lives up to its name

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a normal high school student who decides to turn his superhero fantasy into a reality. With nothing more than a green and yellow wetsuit, a mask and a few weeks of "training," the homemade superhero - who calls himself Kick-Ass - gets off to a rough start. After being stabbed and run over by a car in an act of heroism gone wrong, he loses nerve sensation in his body but gains an enormous amount of heroic potential. Kick-Ass, once he's recovered, quickly becomes a YouTube sensation thanks to his crime fighting exploits. Intrigued by this newcomer's rise to fame, a masked vigilante called Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his highly trained 11-year-old assassin daughter (Chloe Moretz) enlist Kick-Ass into their quest to take down a local crime boss.

"Kick-Ass" seamlessly translates comic book visuals to the silver screen. With breathlessly fast camera movements, fluid fast-forward and slow-mo, and the kind of violence that recalls the classic "Boom!" and "Pow!" of graphic novels, the movie has a style all its own. Add camera angles reminiscent of first-person shooting games, and suddenly you are transported into the latest video game. Vaughn deserves a significant amount of credit for the way this movie simultaneously epitomizes and satirizes the comic book genre.

The ridiculously over-the-top gore (how often do you see a man explode in an industrial microwave?) and the crime-fighting preteen who toes the line between adorable and downright vicious make it easy to criticize this movie as amoral. But its brilliance comes from how it ropes you into its sick and cruel universe and adds a blackly comic, Quentin Tarantino-esque spin to every moment of bone-crunching violence. Never before has a hit-and-run elicited such sidesplitting laughter, and you can't help but giggle when Dave's mother does a face-plant in her cereal bowl after an on-screen aneurysm. Is this violence for the sake of violence? Well, no. There's actually a deeper subtext to the movie than meets the eye.

This becomes clear when a macho bad guy, who sees Kick-Ass as nothing more than a deranged teen in a funny costume, asks the hero what's wrong with him. Kick-Ass then points out the irony that he is considered the crazy one for helping a man being beaten to death, while the patrons of a crowded diner do nothing but watch and film the scene on their cell phones.

Between YouTube, Facebook and news on television, our generation has many tools for observing other people's lives from afar. We watch their pain and suffering and assume that nothing can be done. While there's no doubt that the antics of Kick-Ass and his superhero buddies push the boundaries of vigilante justice, the movie does not seem to think that's such a bad thing - maybe. That message is just the kick in the ass that our society needs to take action against the evils people face every day. Or maybe it's just really amusing to watch Nicolas Cage act like a 50-year-old Batman wannabe. Either way, "Kick-Ass" is a movie that lives up to its name and never lets up.

5 paws

Pros: According to a bodyguard in the movie, "Fuck this shit. I'm getting the bazooka." (In other words: violence, comedic genius and visual spectacle.)

Cons: Making jokes about an 11-year-old vigilante assassin risks being seen as morally questionable.