Movie Review – Kick-Ass – Worthy Of The Hype? Hell Yes.

I was lucky enough to catch a preview screening of Kick-Ass last night. This comic-book based film is directed Matthew Vaughn, whose previous films include Layer Cake and Stardust, along with his being the significant other of Claudia Schiffer. Jane Goldman, Jonathan Ross’ amply upholstered wife was also on board as writer, adapting the story while the comic was still being published. She made for some awesome premier pictures... Also behind the camera were Brad Pitt and Kick-Ass’s comicbook creators; Mark Millar and John Romita Jr, as producers

Anyway, my point here is that the people behind this movie are comic fans. A worrying proposition as often those most enamoured of a subject are the least qualified to bring it to the unbelieving masses. However, in this case, they’ve exceeded expectations and not just made a great comic-book movie, but a great movie, period.

I think it’s safe to say that Kick-Ass has shot straight into my top 5 comic book movies of all time and may even be pushing for a top 3 slot. I’ll tell you about the rest of the list another time...

While this film stays (relatively) grounded in the real world, the story is presented to us in a very interesting fashion. We get captions on screen “Meanwhile...”, “Five years ago...” giving a framing device that’s very familiar to comic fans. Flashbacks are made via animated overlays on top of the cast. While this sounds like it might be overdone or too much, it’s kept to just the right amount. Giving you appropriate flashes of Kick-Ass’s comic origins, without taking you too far from the fact this is live-action.

The story revolves around an average teenager called Dave Lizewski, existing at high school, not excelling in any particular area, just making it from one day to the next. Fed up with constantly getting mugged for his phone and wallet while onlookers ignore his plight, Dave questions why no-one ever thinks to take the next step. Dave’s equally geeky mates laugh at his suggestion that one person could put on a mask and help people, arguing that to do so would be virtual suicide. Undeterred, Dave bravely/stupidly buys himself an outfit and tries to stop two guys from stealing a car. Unsurprisingly, this goes horribly wrong. Dave is stabbed and then run over, resulting in a 6 month stay in hospital, plates throughout his body and deadened nerves making him resistant to pain to some degree.

Any normal person wouldn’t have got in that situation to begin with, but if they had, then surely after those events, they’d hang up their mask and go back to suburbia. Not Dave though, he starts patrolling at night, looking for ways to help people, frustrated at society’s “I’m alright jack” attitude.

Dave’s breakthrough moment come when he interferes with 3 gang members attacking a lone man outside a 7-11. While Dave takes an absolute hiding, he does save the victim and is caught on video via mobile phones of the bystanders. Enter YouTube and MySpace and Dave’s Kick–Ass persona become an overnight celebrity. As Dave revels in his new double life, forming a friendship with the school hottie who mistakenly thinks he’s gay and helping people at night as Kick-Ass, the local mafia are experiencing problems with their drug trade being disrupted by someone who, for all intents and purposes, sounds like Batman. Unsurprisingly, Dave, the mafia and this mystery vigilante all cross paths and the results are not pretty...

Arguably the biggest cheers in the movie come from scenes featuring Hit-Girl, Big Daddy’s 11 year old psychotic daughter. Gleefully unwrapping butterfly knives for birthday presents and even more gleefully using them on drug-dealers and assorted scumbags, she’s like a Looney Tunes version of Leon’s Matilda. And this is a very good thing. Chloe Moretz could well be on track to be the next Natalie Portman, graduating from breakout child star, to fully fledged leading lady in a few years.

While her father sounds remarkably like Adam West’s Batman, she sounds like a foulmouthed little reprobate, uttering surprisingly colourful language for such a young lady. In fact, the voice work across the board is excellent. Aaron Johnson perfectly captures the just broken and still-cracking teenage voice for Dave, breaking more and more as the situations get more and more extreme. Mark Strong, seemingly typecast as the new Jason Isaacs in terms of villainy, pulls off an archetypal NY Italian American gangster perfectly, as do his cohorts. Admittedly Dexter Fletcher and Jason Flemyng’s accents could use work, but does that really surprise you?

The action scenes are fast, brutal and visceral, not quite at Shogun Assassin levels, but come close on more than one occasion. The camerawork throughout the sequences is great. One flourish I particularly liked was the camera cutting to facial close-ups of each of the goons in a corridor as the Prodigy’s Omen pounded away over the speakers, the camera switching to the next goon with every beat. The soundtrack suits the film well, with a mix of rock and dance, generally lyric free.

The film is over-flowing with comic references, from Dave’s girlfriend referencing (The really rather excellent) Scott Pilgrim series, to The Spirit 3 appearing on a cinema marquee (Oh Frak, no...) but these are done in such a subtle way that the comic fans in the audience can smile wryly at them while the uninitiated won’t even notice them.

Go see Kick-Ass as soon as you can. Run, don’t walk. Enjoy it’s silly violence, enjoy the great performances from Johnson and Moretz, cheer as bad guys get their comeuppance and laugh at everyone’s misfortune to be caught up in such a ludicrous situation.

While the tone of this film wouldn’t have suited Marvel’s forthcoming Thor, I do find myself wondering what a Vaughn-helmed Thor would have been like…

Movie of the year? Until Iron Man 2 and The Losers come out, yes it is.

Movie Review – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Hello again faithful reader, or neophyte, dipping your metaphorical toes in the pool of my mind.

Given the glorious cash-saving nature of Orange Wednesdays here in the UK, I went to the cinema last night with a mate, intending to see Green Zone but after my friend said he’d already seen it, settled for the other film I really wanted to watch instead: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Based on Stieg Larsson’s book of the same name, the first in his Millennium Trilogy, the film was made several years ago in Larsson’s native Sweden and has now been subtitled for an English audience following the massive success of his books. Sadly, Larsson died of a sudden massive heart attack in 2004 before this novel was published, never seeing the huge success his work would become.

The story opens with an old man receiving a gift in the mail, the nature of which upsets him greatly. We then switch to a court where an investigative journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, is found guilty of libelling a major businessman. He is sentenced to 3 months in prison and has up to 6 months to settle affairs before having to serve his time. Stepping back from his role at Millennium magazine (Hence the trilogy’s title) to save the magazine he helped build, he is watched by a young woman who compiles a hefty dossier on every aspect of his life. Mikael is approached by a representative of the old man form the introduction and asked to investigate the disappearance of his beloved niece almost 50 years previously.

We start to move between the start of his investigation, and his attempts to solve a mystery older than he is, and the girl who had been following him. Lisbeth Salander is a tattooed, pierced, fierce, damaged woman. Clearly she’s suffered at the hands of individuals and the system and has hardened into the character we see. Here the film suffers from a case of bad storytelling. At no point do they make you aware of her having Asperger’s Syndrome. Given her brusque nature and social awkwardness, you might just think she was an anti-social or difficult person. But the very thing that makes her so awkward is the same thing that makes her such an excellent hacker and investigator.

She picks up on patterns, has a photographic memory (which given what she’s been through and goes through, is more of a curse than a blessing) and is pretty handy with a 5-iron...

While she has to deal with an abusive guardian assigned to her by the probation service, Mikael’s investigation finds clues but stalls as he fails to uncover their meaning. As Lisbeth goes through some particularly harrowing events, she exacts an entirely appropriate revenge on her so-called guardian and starts to obsess on Mikael and his investigation. For those of you who haven’t read the book, here’s fair warning: there are some very graphic and upsetting scenes in the movie. Not quite “Irreversible” level, but pretty close. Ultimately, she continues to hack into his laptop and after finding some of the case notes, starts to work out what they mean. After emailing him her findings, he tracks her down and asks her to work with him on the case.

It’s at this point the film really kicks into high gear. The relationship and dynamic between these two very different characters is great to watch, often providing moments of genuine humour in an otherwise very serious film.

With that in mind I find that I really enjoyed the movie, in terms of the mystery (Nothing groundbreaking or new but interesting nonetheless), the characters and the cinematography, strangely. What struck me throughout the film, was how bleak and lonely Sweden seemed to be. I don’t think for a moment it’s really that soul-crushingly grey, but the director wants us to feel as oppressed and lonely as Mikael and Lisbeth each feel in their respective situations.

One touch that I found impressive was the way the sound faded into constant static on two occasions when a character was in a highly dangerous and awful situation. Minor detail but one I appreciated. I’d definitely recommend catching this at the cinema if you can. While a subtitled Swedish crime thriller might sound like a hard-sell, I found it entertaining and engaging. I hope this is a big enough success that we get the remaining two films subtitled and released soon.