I arrived at the theater about a half hour before my show, the first show of the day on a Sunday. There were barely any cars in the lot and I imagined most of the ones that were there belonged to employees. I walked in and ducked under the queue ropes to avoid looking like a tool as I traversed the maze to the box office. I got to the counter just as a rather rotund but well dressed black man and a young boy of about 7 who I assumed was his son were walking off. I heard the boy say to the man "Did you see that one, it was called "Kick-." The man hushed the boy and as they walked through the door into the lobby he replied "Yeah, I saw, but we don't say those things." I guess that was the warning.

Kick-Ass opens with a bang, one that seems to just be there to underscore the running theme of "don't try this at home" and "real human people can't pull this shit off." Sadly that bang (the sounds a man makes when he hits a cab after falling 38 stories) is mostly there for laughs, as the film seems to forget it's own message by the third act. Afterwards, the narration spends an awfully long time discussing teenage masturbation and if you haven't gotten up and taken your 9 year old out of the theater at that point, you have lost your right to complain about the film (the two in my theater both stayed for the duration). This review will contain spoilers.

This is the point where I have to tell you that I've never read the Kick-Ass comics and I'm judging it solely on it's merits as a film, not it's faithfulness to source material. So, to sum up for those of you bored by long reviews- it was an awesome, fun, kinetic thrill ride for the first two acts after which it completely falls apart. Short attention spans may now leave.

So, for a quick recap of the plot (in case you are reading this with no idea what I'm writing about), Kick-Ass is about a comic book nerd who gets the wild idea to be a hero, mostly because he's not doing anything else. You get the impression, listening to his narration at the opening of the film, that if he had an XBox, a place on the football team, or a girlfriend that he'd never have bothered. He doesn't have those things, though so he buys a wet suit and goes to fight crime. Then he gets stabbed and hit by a car and becomes a dime store Darkman with dulled nerve endings and some bits of metal to hold his bones together. Now he is off to really fight crime, because now he can get beat to hell and not feel it so much.

Once Dave gets his "super powers" (proving that no, normal humans can't do this shit) the movie kind of runs out of stuff to do with him. At this point the film introduces Hit Girl and Big Daddy (Mr. Bubbles!) and through them Kick-Ass is given something to do. Hit Girl and Big Daddy collectively kick enough ass and take enough names that mob boss Mark Strong gets pissed and decides to blame it all on Kick-Ass, placing a bounty on his head. So Kick-Ass unknowingly plays cat and mouse for a while until he ends up caught at the end of the second act. Along the way he is mistakenly labeled as gay, causing the girl he has the hots for to now want to be his friend, because she has always wanted a gay friend. I wish this had been explored more because there is definitely something to be said about how gays are becoming a commodity, especially among self-absorbed straight women, something that people should feel awfully ashamed of.

The first two acts have their flaws, mostly involving redundant and apparently meaningless plot points, but largely they are fast paced and kinetic with some really (REALLY) fun action scenes (almost all featuring Hit Girl, pretty much none featuring Kick-Ass). Near the end of the second act Kick-Ass and Big Daddy have gotten themselves captured and are being beaten and tortured live on the internet (and for a minute, on TV also) and it's promised that it will end in their deaths. Here, Kick-Ass (in voice over) makes a fun comment to the people in the audience assuming that he'll survive the scene (he does) merely because he's narrating it; it was a nice nod to movies and I enjoyed it. Almost immediately following that comment is the climax of the film. Hit Girl shows up to save them (surprising no one in the audience) and we get the single best action scene of the film. This scene is gorgeous even as it's brutal and is shot with such skill that you can only admire director Matthew Vaughn. The scene is set to a piece of music from Sunshine that carries the kind of urgency that a young girl (or anyone, really) would likely feel when trying to rescue her father (it also seems to prove that John Murphy is his own biggest fan). Big Daddy sits tied to a chair and yells commands to his daughter, showing that for all her determination, she wasn't ready for anything like this. Upon reflection, it's horrible that a child of that age would have to shoulder such things and if you think about it from a real world stand point, it's heart breaking what her father did to her. The scene ends as she accepts her father's death better than anyone possibly could and from here the film spirals out of control into the stratosphere of absurdity.

The third act climax is just stupid, I can't say it any plainer than that. It has none of the weight and emotion of the Hit Girl rescue scene, nor does it have any action that is framed as nicely as much of what we've seen previously. Hit Girl assaults the hide out of mob boss Mark Strong and kills every one of the henchmen, save four. Those four only survived to that point because she ran out of bullets and knives. You see, Hit Girl has a super power and that is that she's completely invincible when holding a weapon. At one point she picks up a knife from a table nearby and the music swells letting us know that she's on the upswing now. Anyway, she runs out of guns (despite packing 7 or 8 of them in her bag ten minutes prior) and is hiding out in the kitchen while fat slow henchman goes to get a rocket launcher to shoot the kitchen with (yes, really). After this scene drags on for what feels like a hour, standing in stark contrast to the fast paced and fun action of earlier in the film, Kick-Ass shows up and the movie loses it's damn mind. Kick-Ass arrives outside of the penthouse balcony in a jet pack that has shoulder mounted duel 5.56mm miniguns. He blows the ass out of the three henchmen left (Hit Girl got one with kitchen knives prior) and then we are treated to a fist fight. Basically Kick-Ass goes off to play grab-ass with the mob boss's son while Hit Girl fights the mob boss. We are treated to a grown man beating the shit out of a kid until Kick-Ass shows back up and shoots him with the rocket launcher (yes, really). As he flies out of the window and across town, I was reminded of True Lies and being reminded of True Lies is NEVER a good thing (unless it's Jamie Lee Curtis doing a strip tease).

A lot of the movies themes are spoon fed to the audience by the voice over, such as when Kick-Ass talks about how he doesn't want to be a hero now that he has a girlfriend (yeah, of course he gets the girl despite lying to her for the entire runtime of the film) totally reinforcing the fact that he just needed a hobby. Hit Girl and Big Daddy are deeper and more interesting, especially once you realize that out of his lust for vengeance Big Daddy made his own daughter into a sociopath. Big Daddy's death adds emotion but while the audience may feel it, Hit Girl surely doesn't. An 11 year old girl loses her father and not hours later is laughing and smiling, think on that a moment.

There was plenty to like in Kick-Ass, don't get me wrong, but there was a lot wrong with it too. It was nice to see Jason Flemyng and Dexter Fletcher together again, sort of a mini Lock, Stock, and Two Smokin' Barrels reunion. It was nice to see Mark Strong reunited with the score from Sunshine. Hit Girl and Big Daddy both had really fun and kick ass action scenes and I can't say enough how much I enjoyed the Hit Girl rescue scene, which I'd rate high on my list of "Bad Ass Action Scenes." The drug dealer subplot with Dave's love interest seemed out of place. The fact that the girl was crying over the dead drug dealer seemed forced since nothing much was established about their relationship other than he belted her once.

When it comes down to it though, I'm a last taste kind of guy. I always leave what I like to call a "perfect bite" on my plate for the wrap up, one little bite that incorporates the best part of the meal. I feel the same way about good-byes, I want one perfect moment when parting, something to keep in my memory in case it never comes again. These are the reasons why the third act with all of it's failures ultimately sunk the film for me. It went out on a dumb note, after a dumb action scene. As a teenager I'd have creamed myself at the thought of a mingun wielding jetpack, but as an adult it seems pretty dumb. The fact that the climax drug on and felt like it lost focus hurt and the fact that Hit Girl barely acknowledged her fathers death felt hollow.

All in all, Kick-Ass is a movie I'd watch again on DVD if someone loaned it to me, but I'd shut it off at the end of the second act. It's a fun and entertaining movie up until that point and even managed some emotion, but once we start the endgame, it totally shits the bed. Kick-Ass is not a bad movie it's just a mediocre one that will be elevated by it's ability to cause controversy rather than it's merits as a film.

Summary: movies, society