Movie Reviews
2 Reviews Of 'Kick-Ass'
By Big Hollywood
Apr 24, 2010 - 8:46:58 AM

First Review By Leigh Scott:

I wasn’t really surprised to see a lot of negative comments here on a recent review of the film “Kick-Ass.”  An eleven-year old-girl cursing and firing a Glock 20 into the faces of mob thugs isn’t exactly for everybody.

I was shocked by the one star review by the once relevant film critic known as Roger Ebert. After all, this is a guy who gleefully relishes the violence of Tarantino films and has no problem with controversial and morally offensive material.

How could a movie so offend both the Left and the Right? And how could that same movie be so entertaining to me that I’ve already seen it twice and demanded that every member of my post production staff see it this weekend?

And then, halfway through my second screening, it hit me. “Kick-Ass” may be the first truly Libertarian film I’ve ever seen.

A very conservative, religious friend once asked me to explain my views. He was stumped that we agreed on almost everything. But, when a lot of the social issues came up, I kinda shuffled my feet and looked to the ground. I summarized it this way: He and I could spend all day Saturday agreeing about taxes, the role of government, and foreign policy, yet, on Sunday, he would be in church and I would be nursing a hangover.

Libertarians are the party boys and girls of the conservative movement.

While I acknowledge that our country was founded by religious men and that many, if not all, of our traditions stem from Christian concepts, I don’t think our liberties are directly tied to any specific religious belief or moral paradigm. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Freedom of religion also means freedom FROM religion. The notion that government doesn’t have the right to take my money, my guns, or my property without my consent also extends to the notion that no person, from the government or anywhere else can tell me how to live my life.

Unlike the left, who shares a portion of this view, I have no negative views of religious people or people who choose to live a life based on a different moral code. I find myself as uncomfortable or comfortable at a church picnic as I do at a bar in West Hollywood. It’s simply illogical for me to judge another, or inflict my will upon my fellow citizens. It’s your life, not mine.

I can completely understand why Christians would not want to see or support “Kick-Ass.” There is nothing inconsistent or revealing in that position. All I will say is that it is wicked cool and you’re missing out.

Ebert and critics on the left are a different story. Why would he be so offended by the “Hit Girl” character? After all, this is a man who recently gave a glowing review to Roman Polanksi’s latest film. Roman Polanski, of course, sexually forced himself on girl not much older than actress Chloe Moretz. Sure, Ebert will say that you have to separate the film from the filmmaker, but wouldn’t the same logic excuse an actress simply playing a part to make a larger thematic point?

Further digging reveals that Ebert gave two stars to the unwatchable film “Hounddog.” In that film a similarly aged Dakota Fanning is raped on screen. There is no outrage at that from him. Nor is there any protest to the underage Fanning acting quite adult in the recent “Ruanways” film, which he gave three stars.

What Ebert is really offended about is the fact that the underage “Hit Girl” isn’t a victim. It’s okay to have young actresses brutalized sexually or engaged in salacious situations involving drugs and sex as long as they maintain the leftist party line that women are helpless victims. The movie “Precious” depicts a young girl who is brutalized by her family and must turn to the state for help. Awesome! Four stars. “Hit Girl” doesn’t take sh!t from anybody, avenges her family, drives a hot rod, and has $3 million in cash in a suitcase. She doesn’t need anyone or anything. My, my how offensive!

In the leftist paradigm, being a victim is the pinnacle of human achievement. Each special interest group battles society and each other to prove who is more oppressed, who has less civil rights, and who deserves more of our pity. “Kick-Ass” is about people who refuse to be victims. It is about average people who rise up and take whatever means necessary to restore the balance between good and evil. They do not go to the police or rely on the government to help. They do not revel in their underdog status. They perceive true injustice and take steps to stop it.

Perhaps even more offensive to Ebert is the film’s lack of moral ambiguity. Good guys are good. Bad guys are bad. Period. End of discussion. The heroes do not realize that they are becoming like their enemy at some point in the film. They do not buy into some notion of a “cycle of violence” between cops and criminals. They dispose their righteous justice, then rightfully go back to their normal lives.

The individual is king in “Kick-Ass.” Each character makes their own decisions and lives by the consequences of their actions. They do not wait for others to help them. They help themselves. They react to the empirical, undeniable, reality of right and wrong. They do not act selfishly, for they understand that in helping themselves, they help those around them.

At one point, in a hilarious riff on the main theme of the “Spider-man” films, Kick-Ass states that “with no power, comes no responsibility.” Isn’t that the central tenant of modern leftist thought? Why should they help others when the government does that? Why should they donate to charity when they patriotically pay their taxes? Why should they risk themselves when someone is in trouble because the police or military do that. Of course, “Kick-Ass” doesn’t reinforce this notion. It goes against it. Every human being is responsible for making the world a better place. The best way to do that is by making yourself the best you can be. You can’t turn a blind eye to evil and injustice, wallowing in your status as a victim, you must be proactive to defeat injustice and evil in a personal, direct, and often risky way.

Yes, on the surface, “Kick-Ass” is morally depraved. It features wildly offensive language and breathlessly violent images. It does indeed have an eleven-year-old girl who could take down Van Dame and whose mouth would make Mickey Rourke blush. It features people having sex in public. It depicts drug use. But that’s not the whole story. At it’s thematic core, it’s about the struggle between good and evil, personal responsibility, and the importance of the individual. It is a solid, truthful message wrapped up in a morally questionable package.

And that friends, is Libertarianism in a nutshell. (end of first review)

"KICK-ASS" IS NOT JUST FOR LIBERTARIANS:  by John Nolte

When it comes to films, the least of my concerns is content. The stuff that’s in a movie has very little to do with its theme — what a story wants to tell the world — and that’s where a filmmaker is most likely to win or lose me. Does “Kick Ass” have an 11 year-old costumed heroine named Hit Girl who lays violent waste  to bad guys but only after calling them “c*nts” and “motherf*ckers?” Indeed it does. But a heroine she is and one of the finest pre-teen role models Hollywood’s come up with in a long, long time. So powerfully written and realized is this pint-sized, two-fisted ball of righteous vengeance that one of her more heroic feats is saving “Kick-Ass” all on her own even though she’s only a supporting player.

The central story is a fairly weak one that revolves around Dave (Aaron Johnson), one of those typically awkward Hollywood movie teens with a crush on a girl way above his league and part of a trio of nerdy friends enamored with comic books and victimized by bullies.  Dave can’t understand why no one’s ever decided to man up and become a superhero. After all, there’s no law against it and all you need is a costume and the guts, right?

Well, kind of. Tired of being bullied and eager to boost his own self-esteem, after costuming himself in a rubber wetsuit, Dave becomes Kick Ass, a masked avenger seeking to right wrongs on the mean streets of New York. His problem of course is that beneath all that rubber he’s still Dave, a wimp with no formal superhero training. Disaster looms but from afar someone’s watching; a real superhero with real training: Big Daddy (a marvelous Nicolas Cage), a caped crusader who dresses like Batman, talks like Adam West, and  knows the kid’s a fool but admires his grit.

When we initially meet Big Daddy, he’s Damon, a soft-spoken, milquetoast of a man firing a bullet into the chest of his eleven year-old daughter Mindy (Chloe Moretz). The bullet-proof vest she wears might save her life but doesn’t lessen the impact, and she flies off screen, gets up, dusts herself off, and asks for more. Damon and Mindy might have a sweet, loving, father-daughter relationship but Big Daddy and Hit Girl are on a deadly serious mission to lay a reckoning on the city’s most powerful gangster and drug dealer, Frank D’Amico. And it’s when the story focuses here and not on the overly-familiar story involving Dave, that “Kick-Ass” comes alive. But when both stories do finally come together you have yourself some pure movie nirvana.

In an age when Hollywood peddles nihilism as a major food group, I’m sympathetic to those who were knee-jerk disgusted upon hearing about the words put into a young actresses mouth. My first reaction was to write the film off as yet another example of our Tinseltown cretins once again pushing the envelope for the sake of pushing the envelope. The whole idea bored me. Two things, however, convinced me to duck into an early Saturday matinee and give it a chance.

The first is director Matthew Vaughn, the helmer behind “Stardust,” one of the most under-rated, romantic, sincere and un-ironic, non-religious fantasy films to come out in a long time. Like Zack Snyder (“300,” “Watchmen”) and Christopher Nolan (“The Dark Knight,” “Insomnia”), Vaughn is worth watching – part of a new breed of talented commercial filmmakers who understands great storytelling requires weaving classic (but complicated) themes of heroism, redemption, and self-sacrifice into their work. The second was Roger Ebert’s pan of the film based solely on his moral outrage towards the Hit Girl character. Like many leftists, Ebert frequently confuses his ideology with morality. Something was up.

And something was.

Everywhere on MTV, the Disney Channel and elsewhere you’ll find young sanctimonious, sexualized young girls given the mission of teaching their fellow tweens that narcissism is some kind of value. The stunning self-involvement and respect for nothing constantly on parade in our entertainment culture is a kind of toxic heroin mainlined into our youth as a way of keeping them forever with their hands out; victims eternally convinced the world owes them something just because it’s good for their self-esteem.  Their value to the left is incalculable. These attractive human vacancies are reliable spouters of left-wing talking points, picking up right where the selfish boomers left off.

Given the choice between exposing a young, impressionable mind to this kind of corrosive ideology and the themes swirling around Hit Girl should be a no brainer for parents with children over the age of 15.

Our purple-wigged heroine might have a crude way of expressing her complete contempt and full-throated disgust for bad guys, but she’s dignified, heroic, selfless, completely self-reliant, and lives by a simple code that says evil loses. No angst, no handwringing, and no moral equivalency. Appeasers debate tactics. Heroes understand the vast moral gulf between those who target the innocent and those who target those who target the innocent. And unlike the tweens on Disney and MTV, Hit Girl’s not eroticized.

“Kick Ass” also happens to be a uniquely exhilarating experience, every minute of it used to expertly set up an unforgettable third act climax that might have used Ennio Morricone’s “Per Qualche Dollaro in Piu” from Sergio Leone’s “For A Few Dollars More” better than “For A Few Dollars More.”

Part “Watchmen,” part “Dark Knight,” “Kick-Ass” represents iconoclastic filmmaking at its best and not because of the shocking language spouted by a pre-teen, but because this pre-teen stands for something – the kind of something that tears at the Hollywood lefts’ tired pillars of nihilism and apathy, and in the process offends all the right people.