Kick-Ass Review

Kick-Ass seems like your normal super hero movie where the geek in high school gets some sort of super power and starts fighting crime all over the city, and in the end the super hero gets the girl and saves everyone. However, this movie just isn't that kind of movie. In fact, the main character doesn't fight much crime at all. Instead the other two heroes, Big Daddy and Hit Girl, are the ones that actually get things taken care of.

The movie starts off innocently enough. The main character, Dave Lezewski, is narrating and talking about how he wonders why out of all of the super hero movies, comics, and stories, there aren't more people that try and be one of these masked crusaders. It then shows his life before he becomes Kick-Ass. He is a normal boy with a normal life and as he puts it, his only super power is "being invisible to girls." This wouldn't make a very good story though if there was just a normal boy in a normal life. We deal with that every day. Instead, Dave ends up coming with the idea of becoming a masked hero when he is out with his friends. He gets a costume, a rag-tag mismatch of material that ends up looking pretty good, and then begins to fight crime. Throughout the course of the movie, there are twists and turns in the plot that keep leaving the viewer guessing as to who will live and who will die. Except for the bad guy. The bad guy always loses.

Overall rating: 8

I found the movie to be quite enjoyable with enough fight scenes to keep the action going but enough plot to make it intellectually pleasing as well. However, it is definitely not the best that could have been done. It also does not have the same history as other comic book movies like Batman, or Spiderman simply because it is not affiliated with DC or Marvel.

Plot: 9

There were definitely some parts that were predictable but there were many parts that were actually quite surprising. This may be from my lack of background in comic books but no matter what, the writing was enjoyable. The characters are written with the usual archetypes. The main character is the geek turned hero, the antagonist is a mob boss, and the girl is pretty and popular. However, there are other twists to their characters that add extra depth to the characters.

Visuals: 10

Throughout the movie there are vibrant colors. As a comic book movie, I would expect a lot of bright colors. These colors come from the costumes and the backgrounds. The sets for the movie are rather detailed as well. Dave/Kick-Ass's bedroom is really well-done. It has typical high school student's paraphernalia. Even the places that aren't visited a lot have a lot of detail added in as well. The fight scenes were also quite well done. For the most part the camera didn't jump around too much so I was able to follow all of the fights, blood (which they had a lot of) and all.

Sound: 8

The sound they had were mostly well-placed. The music that was chosen was questionable at times though I can understand why they put that kind of music in there. Other times, the music choice was just absolutely perfect for the scene.

Actors: 7

I'm not sure what kind of budget the producers of Kick-Ass had but in my opinion they could have used some better actors. Don't get me wrong, the actors were good but that's all they were. None of them blew me away or even made me feel like that actor may have the potential for something good. The only one that I feel has some potential was the little girl who played Hit Girl. Her name is Chloë Grace Moretz. She had some moments that were really good and the others can only improve. The overall choice of actors could have been better but they definitely did good with what they had.

Conclusion:

I would recommend this movie to anyone who loves comic books, comic book movies, or just action movies in general. It has enough action sequences to keep people on their toes but enough storyline to actually keep the movie going without explosions every two seconds. In fact, I believe that there are only 2 major explosions and one of them is REALLY awesome.

Perhaps when you see it you will have a different opinion and that's okay. No matter what your opinion is, you can let me know what you think in the comments below or you can email me at oanta93@gmail.com