Kickass

I have been telling everyone that “Kickass” is American Pie meets Goodfellas. I believe it’s a pretty accurate observation. And that’s why I didn’t like it. I feel there are two completely different stories in two completely different styles, and one contantly reminds the viewer that the other wasn’t real. These two different styles simply don’t work well together.

I do have to give the credit to the filmmakers to attempt such combination for originality. I am notoriously well-known for resisting new things, so maybe I am wrong to think it doesn’t work. After all the movie got good reviews from critics and a lot of people liked it.

The movie tells the story of a highschool teenager who wants to be a superhero. He buys a superhero outfit and starts roaming the streets to do good, only to get his ass kicked. The antagonist of the movie is a ruthless gangster, whose son shares the same ambition as out main character. The catalyst of the movie is Nicholas Cage, along with his daughter Hit Girl, who has been framed by the gangster and done time in prison. His wife became extremely depressed and died of overdose while he was in prison, but somehow managed to give birth to Hit Girl. So now the father and the daughter are teamed up to revenge. Their goal is to kill the gangster.

When our main character comes across Cage and Hit Girl, he realizes that he is never gonna be a true superhero, in spite of the fact that some luck has brought him Internet fame. In the meantime, the gangster Frank mistakes the damages Cage has done our main character’s doing. Eventually, our main character and Cage and hit girl are pushed to a corner. Cage dies, and our main guy and the hit girl team up to defeat Frank. At the end, we see Frank's son has now become the new villain and a sequel is implied.

I thought it was interesting to see how a normal teenager with the desire of being recognized and getting the girl of his dream attempt to become the superhero, and when reality kicks in, he realizes that there is no way he can be one. I also like the idea of his meeting someone he considers the true superhero, but I wish the rest of the movie (from midpoint on) was about how the main character changes through close interaction with Cage and Hit Girl. I lost interest in the movie from the midpoint on, because the characters remained disconnected with each other, and at many places, our main character became so passive I lost interest in him altogether. Yes, he does take action at the very end, but it's way too late for me to care about him.

It’s interesting to see the style of high school comedy and bloody gangster dramas in one movie. When Kickass gets stabbed in the stomach and then ran over by a car, the scene is so brutal that it shocked me. It got my interest right away, but somehow when the movie got back to the tone of High School comedy and then went back and forth between the two styles, it lost me because I didn't really believe in the world anymore.