KICK-ASS: A New Kind Of Super Villain, “The Unreliable Narrator”

Even after see­ing it twice, Your Humble Reviewer still had plenty to pon­der on the sub­ject of Kick-Ass.  This con­tro­ver­sial riff on the super­hero genre has attracted admi­ra­tion and admo­ni­tion in equal mea­sure.  Some see it as a supe­rior ver­sion of the super­hero film, oth­ers see it as a devi­ous satire and some see it as a con­fused attempt at doing both.  There’s even a con­tin­gent that sees it as a cyn­i­cal cash-grab that tries to have its cake and eat it, too, occa­sion­ally tweak­ing the expec­ta­tions of its core audi­ence to please itself even as it pan­ders to their desires for blood­shed and self-reflexive hipness.

If Your Humble Reviewer has to pick a side, he’ll fall in with the “devi­ous satire” gang.  This is because Kick-Ass feels sub­ver­sive in a way that nei­ther its detrac­tors or admir­ers give it credit for.  The rea­son for this opin­ion is rooted in the film’s use of “the unre­li­able nar­ra­tor”… more on that in a moment.

First, a bit of plot sum­mary.  The sto­ry­line of Kick-Ass takes its focus around Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a nerdy but earnest teen who nar­rates the film and serves as our nom­i­nal hero/audience-identification fig­ure.  Fueled by a steady diet of comic books and a naïve desire to bring some hero­ism into his drab world, Lizewski turns a div­ing suit into a super­hero cos­tume and tries to com­bat crime.  His first encounter results in bone-crushing tragedy and a lengthy hos­pi­tal stay.  He emerges from the hos­pi­tal with dead­ened nerves, steel-reinforced bones and a desire to con­tinue his super­hero dream.

Dave sky­rock­ets to fame when a video of his cos­tumed alter-ego fight­ing a gang of thugs becomes a YouTube sen­sa­tion.  This earns him the atten­tion of Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage), an embit­tered ex-cop who is plot­ting revenge on the crim­i­nals who ruined his life and train­ing his daugh­ter, Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz), to be a pint-sized killing machine.  Also watch­ing is Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong), a local crime boss who mis­tak­enly believes Dave is inter­fer­ing with his drug trade (the real cul­prit is Big Daddy) and wants to kill him as a warn­ing to aspir­ing do-gooders.  Frank’s nerdy but ambi­tious son, Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), fash­ions his own “hero” alter-ego, Red Mist, to befriend Kick-Ass and set him up for a fall…

The end result def­i­nitely deliv­ers every­thing its tar­get audi­ence was hop­ing for:  Kick-Ass has a sly sense of humor, a sleek and eye-popping visual style fueled by a gen­uine comic-book color scheme, plenty of in-jokes and know­ing nods to  the super­hero mythos and sev­eral daz­zling action sequences that don’t flinch when it comes to blood­shed.  The script, adapted by Jane Goldman with direc­tor Matthew Vaughn from a pop­u­lar comic book, jug­gles a dense set of sub­plots in a com­pre­hen­si­ble man­ner and keeps sev­eral char­ac­ter arcs in focus.  Best of all, Vaughn’s direc­tion offers the mix of tech­ni­cal pro­fi­ciency and kinetic flair nec­es­sary to make the mate­r­ial fly.

Kick-Ass also boasts a well-judged lineup of per­for­mances that skill­fully nav­i­gate the film’s blend of pulp and psy­chol­ogy.  Johnson is con­vinc­ingly earnest as the audience’s cin­e­matic sur­ro­gate, skill­fully blend­ing the character’s nerdish­ness, sen­si­tiv­ity and gutsi­ness to cre­ate a sym­pa­thetic under­dog.  Mintz-Plasse finds an intrigu­ingly dark vari­a­tion on the nerd per­sona he’s been refin­ing since Superbad while Cage fuels his Method-style quirks into a win­ningly eccen­tric char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and Moretz shows an eerily adult grasp of the badass per­sona her char­ac­ter requires.  Elsewhere, Lyndsy Fonseca offers up an amus­ingly libido-inflected take on the “hero’s girl­friend” arche­type, Strong and Michael Rispoli per­form droll goom­bah car­i­ca­tures and Clark Duke and Evan Peters add the occa­sional grace note of wit as Johnson’s wiseass-nerd pals.

However, it’s easy to see why a lot of peo­ple are hav­ing trou­ble with Kick-Ass despite all these attrib­utes: its tone.  Simply put, it never allows the viewer to stay in one emo­tional or psy­cho­log­i­cal area for very long and con­stantly shifts moods and styles in a very jar­ring fash­ion.  One moment it’s play­ing vio­lence and pain for squirm-inducing real­ism,  the next minute it’s played for cheap thrills.  One moment finds the heroes por­trayed as delu­sional and/or insane, the next finds them por­trayed in a wor­ship­ping light.  The shifts from satire to fan­tasy to real­ism are enough to induce whiplash.

That said, a rea­son behind this jar­ring blend of tones revealed itself after a sec­ond view­ing — with all the onscreen excite­ment, it’s easy to for­get the entire story we are see­ing is told by Dave, fil­tered through his per­spec­tive.  The events reveal him to be delu­sional and dan­ger­ously naïve in his take on the world but, as a nar­ra­tor, he needs to make him­self the hero.  His attempts to impose a heroic, redemp­tive take upon a dis­turb­ing, often tragic story cre­ates the schizoid tone the audi­ence feels: no mat­ter how he tries to frame it, the dis­turb­ing nature of what is going on keeps bub­bling to the sur­face.  He’s the clas­sic “unre­li­able nar­ra­tor” and we, the audi­ence, are the vic­tim of self-deceiving whims.

At least that’s Your Humble Reviewer’s take on it.  The only ones who really know are Vaughn and Goldman and it’ll be inter­est­ing when they decide to spill the beans.  Whatever the case may be, Kick-Ass toys with its genre in a dar­ing way and deliv­ers a thrilling pack­age that puts most comic-book flicks to shame in terms of vision, com­plex­ity and sheer cin­e­matic verve.  If you’re a comic book fan and you haven’t seen it, you are miss­ing out.