Kick Ass - Review

Script + Plot - 8
Characters - 7
Actors - 8
Soundtrack - 9
Visuals + Sounds - 8
Editing + Cinematography - 9
Directing - 7
Effect - 7

Raw Overall Score - 7.875

Personal Overall Score - 7.7

Brief Overall Review: I thought it was an innovative film and was incredibly entertaining and should be appealing to a wide audience. The characters were memorable, the voiceover was of use and the music added something special to the movie. It was enjoyable and at a good pace, and was realistic but with that little bit of fantasy we all love added to the mix. It had a good message despite initially seeming to have an unrelatable storyline and sometimes being unnecessarily violent.

Script + Plot - 'It is the story of Dave Lizewski, a teenager who sets out to become a real life superhero. His actions are publicized on the Internet and inspire others. He gets caught up with ruthless vigilantes Hit-Girl and Big Daddy who are on a mission to take down the gangster John Genovese.' (from Wikipedia) I had never heard of the Kick-Ass comics before watching this movie so I thought it was an original screenplay at first, obviously it isn't but I think it is a great idea for a movie as well as a comic and the movie started out quite realistic; but obviously no one goes to the movies or reads comics for a realistic view on life, we want to be transported somewhere completely different from our world and witness situations we hope to never see ourselves in, that's where our vigilantes Hit Girl and Big Daddy come in to shake things up.
The script isn't something that particularly stood out to me in a good way or a bad way. When I remember and agree with certain lines in a movie, or a line helps me understand the movie a lot more I usually give kudos; In this movie although there were a couple of lines that stood out to me, I thought the most impressive was when the main character Dave in his voice-over says 'With no power, comes no responsibility... except that's not true.' That line particularly stood out to me and helped me understand Dave's reasoning to all his actions a lot more, and it definitely made me think of my own choices in life and how we all seem to go through life thinking that because we don't have power, or money, or this and that we can't do anything to make a change and that's not true, yes it will be difficult, but you can never not do something. Overall the plot is a good one and definitely quite original, the script was good so an 8 for me.

Characters - The main character Dave Lizewski is by far my favourite character in the movie, I can say that there are not many films where my favourite characters are the leads, I usually tend to enjoy the supporting characters more, however I thoroughly enjoyed his character and this is one movie where the voice-overs helped the audience understand him as a person and his reasonings behind everything. I liked that we could see his progression as a person and I guess as a 'superhero', I thought he was a very believable character and was quite well written. Hit Girl no doubt was many people's favourites, she was just so badass through and through, however I would be lying if I said I wasn't even a little disturbed by seeing such a young girl being so brutally violent in a movie, it made me feel a little uneasy to watch but she was still a highly enjoyable character. Big Daddy was a character I didn't love so much, I felt like there was a lot of his feelings and thoughts we hadn't quite tapped into yet and felt like he was kind of an unsolved case. A lot of the other characters were entertaining and brought their own little contributions into the movie, e.g Red Mist aka Chris, his body guard, the guy working for Chris' dad, etc. Some other characters were a little hard to believe or significantly underdeveloped so I'm giving this a 7.

Actors - I found that most of the actors did a great job, as someone who had never read the Kick-Ass comics I can say that I didn't know if Nicolas Cage did a brilliant job of his character and that's how he was meant to be portrayed, or if he just did a bad job, I wasn't fond of his acting but that could very well be due to the character he was playing. I also thought Mark Strong was a little iffy, he was great at times, but at other moments I felt like he was a bit weak in his delivery, quite inconsistent from my point of view. Also certain actors seemed to not have much verve when in scenes together, but generally they all did well so an 8 from me.

Soundtrack - The soundtrack to this movie I feel was probably a little polarising, and the soundtrack played a heavy part in what I personally thought about this movie to be completely honest. The soundtrack in a number of scenes felt really odd and a little out of place, but I feel like that was the whole point. Although it was not stated as a fact I believed this movie to be a bit of a satire and the soundtrack played into this belief, I felt as if the movie was making just a bit of fun at how people glamorise superheroes and heroism when often it is not something that should be glamorized in the way it is, especially including the parts where there's killing involved etc.
I think the fact that when a character was murdering people (good/bad) and there would be either happy music playing or something equally confusing, it contributed to the satirical element, for me it kind of summed up the entire movie. Generally a good mix of music was used and as a fan of TPR i especially liked that one of their songs was played at the end of the movie, I definitely enjoyed the soundtrack, although I know a couple people found it either confusing or just quite out of place. Anyway that's a 9 for me.

Visuals + Sounds - Can't say that I have a lot to say here or that I remember much about the visual or sound effects, I know I liked the merge of colours in the movie and the general structure with the visuals, I know the action scenes were typically good; the sound i can say less of as I'm not particularly the sort of person to listen out for sound effects, however the fact that I can't remember any out of place sound effects suggests that it was pretty decent so I'll give this section an 8.

Editing + Cinematography- I thought the movie was well cut and edited, just the whole arrangement of scenes and the different angles and just everything flowed together quite nicely and gave the effect that I believe they were going for, I couldn't really see much of a flaw with the editing of the movie although I can't say I'm an expert when it comes to editing, however I can usually spot out obvious faults when it comes down to it. I'm going with a 9 on this aspect.

Directing - I don't have much to say about the directing for this movie, I thought it was pretty good, but it was definitely just a little difficult to see where the movie was going, when I think of directing I obviously think of the direction of the movie and I felt this movie didn't have a definite direction, I didn't think it was all over the place but I felt like Matthew Vaughn had a vision, he tried to express it but it got lost a little bit down the way and was probably overpowered by other aspects of the movie, a 7 from me.

Effect - So I felt this movie had a bit of an effect on me, especially with that one line I mentioned earlier, the movie got me thinking of what I as an average human being could do for the world, it made me certainly think that just because I don't have special resources or abilities doesn't mean I can't do something useful for other people. Of course I highly doubt the movie's aim was to make people consider being a superhero, like I mentioned before I believed the movie to be somewhat satirical, I think it was to kind of say that although we can't be superheroes, we can be important and you don't need superpowers to be a hero to somebody. Although I spent quite some time thinking about this and I definitely enjoyed the movie, I can say that I already forgot a lot of things that happened in the movie after a few hours and the ending didn't particularly stand out to me, I felt like it could've been handled better and had an even better effect on the audience. Overall a 7 in this category.



Who should watch it?
If you don't mind bad language and graphic violence, if you like anything relating to superheroes or heros, if you've ever wondered what it might be like to see a realistic superhero, if you're into comic books/graphic novels, if you're a fan of Chloe Grace Moretz, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Nicolas Cage or Christopher Mintz-Plasse, if you like action movies, if you've read the Kick-Ass or Hit Girl comics.