Kick-Ass 2 (2013)
Grade: B+Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloe Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Morris Chestnut, Jim Carrey, Garrett M. Brown and Donald Faison
Premise: Teens Dave Lizewski and Mindy Macready struggle to keep their self-made superhero past in the past, even as an old rival plots deadly revenge.
Rated R for strong bloody violence, constant profanity (including
graphic sexual references), brief nudity, crude humor and some disturbing images
If it hadn’t come out in the weeks following the
surprisingly-decent Wolverine and the
terrific Elysium, I might praise Kick-Ass 2 for being the first
live-action summer movie truly worth watching since June’s Man of Steel. That said, in a landscape filled with tame PG-13
blockbusters that shy away from blood, carefully count profanities, and act as
though cataclysmic events have little to no effect on the average person, this no-holds-barred, very R-rated comic book adaptation sequel works like a shot of
adrenaline, waking up the daring, bored moviegoer. A big fan of the rude and
crude 2010 original, I knew Kick-Ass 2 would
be a volatile cocktail of a movie, daring you to laugh at cold-cocked gender
and racist stereotypes, thrilling you with elaborately-staged action sequences
and also bringing you back to earth with grisly reminders of the real-life consequences of violence. It also invites you to laugh,
gasp, or do whatever you might do upon learning that one of the major
characters decides—early in the film—that he wants to now and forever be
referred to by the least family-friendly word that ever included both an M and
an F.
Story:
Dorky teen Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has a stunning
girlfriend (Lyndsey Fonseca), a devoted best pal (Clark Duke), and a caring,
admiring father (Garrett M. Brown), but after offing a bloodthirsty mob boss
and barely escaping death at the end of the first movie, his life seems to
drag. Sure, he only bought a body suit and a pair of batons, and did little
actual crime-stopping, but his dalliance as self-made superhero Kick-Ass was a
constant adrenaline rush. And he’s not the only one trying to
adjust—now-parentless little ninja Mindy Macready, aka Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz),
tries to abide by the rules laid down by her kindly-stern guardian (Morris
Chestnut) and live a normal teen high-schooler life, but she can’t settle down, either. After all, her whole life has seemed
to build up to more than trying to get in with snotty queen bee Brooke (Claudia
Lee).
These two, who saved each other’s lives several times over
in the previous film, go their separate ways. When a knack for scalding wit and
supreme fitness actually gets her in with the popular girls, Mindy suddenly finds it wonderfully
easy to not be Hit Girl. Dave, meanwhile, falls for an invitation
to don the suit again, meet up and join forces with another goofy-looking
self-made hero, Doctor Gravity (Donald Faison). The two make an excellent team wielding
bat and batons against thugs on the street, and they soon receive an invite to merge
with the Nirvana of geeky superhero-dom, Justice
Forever, a devoted brotherhood of self-made heroes led by a strutting,
born-again mafia enforcer who calls himself Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey). This
“alliance”—which happens to include the hot-to-trot sister of a
murdered socialite (Lindy Booth), as well as Dave’s good friend Tommy (Duke), dressed as generic superhero “Battle
Guy”—becomes a hit, running the gauntlet from helping out at soup kitchens to
breaking down the door of a covert sex trafficker’s den. There’s trouble in
paradise, though. Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), the geeky,
repressed son of the mobster Kick-Ass killed, decides to accelerate his plans
for dastardly revenge after getting a lesson in steely cruelty from his
incarcerated uncle (Game of Thrones’ Iain
Glenn). He’s soon recruiting an “evil army”, rubbing shoulders with street
punks, drug dealers, ex-cons and retired gangsters and military men from around
the world, and he has his sights set on Kick-Ass.
What Works?
Kick-Ass 2, once
supposed to be subtitled Balls to the
Wall, is one of the fullest and busiest movies of the summer, with about a
dozen major characters and several important subplots. And yet it’s almost
perfectly-balanced—none of the storylines become unnecessarily heavy-handed,
you care about all of the major characters, the fights are cool but they never
distract from the plot, the humor is fearless and plentiful, and the movie
never stoops to the level of mean-spiritedness its predecessor did with its
nasty, late-act torture scene. The two domestic conflicts (Dave trying
to obey his father’s wishes to settle down, and Mindy’s attempts to please her
guardian, Marcus, by being a good, normal girl) are poignant but aren’t rammed
down the viewer’s throat—conveyed in a couple of scenes and a few key
exchanges of dialogue, they’re such familiar teen-movie tropes they don’t need
to take over the movie to make their point.
While a more exclusive niche movie like this was never going
to have a huge audience, 2 did
receive some unfortunate press a few months back when series newcomer Jim
Carrey—who has arguably the most prominent new role—decided
he wouldn’t participate in the preceding publicity campaign for the film (because
of its largely-violent content) in wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. It’s no
secret that what makes the Kick-Ass movies
tick is reckless, ruthless, adrenaline-pumping action, but after watching this
film, I can’t help but defend it. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t feel like
a saint watching a movie like this, and of course it eeks over the line into
tasteless territory a few times, but I notice here, just as I did with the
first movie, that it makes clear the difference between cool, eye-popping
blockbuster-style action, and unpleasant, ripped-from-the-headlines-style
murders and executions. It doesn’t always, but it’s one thing watching Hit Girl
level a bunch of quippy street punks with nun-chucks and drop kicks; it’s an
entirely different thing when someone unexpectedly gets his throat slit by
someone he thought was a friend, or even when one of the main antagonists (a
muscle-bound, lingerie sporting “former KGB", Mother Russia, played by a
fabulously-scene-stealing Olga Kurkulina) coldly mows down a dozen cops, killing them
with knives, gunshots, snaps of the neck, and even a lawnmower. Let’s just say
I love a good action movie, and I like to clap and cheer and exclaim excitedly,
but I know when the happenings onscreen are supposed to be sobering. You’d
hope—and, clearly, Carrey hopes—most everyone can likewise tell the difference.
A movie like Kick-Ass
2 is a dream for actors, because nearly everyone onscreen gets to do
something cool, funny, exciting, interesting or exaggeratedly stupid. It’s true a movie like
this gets its appeal from its action-y razzle-dazzle, but the characters stay
at the fore. Taylor-Johnson again makes Dave a sympathetic figure, a normal guy
who doesn’t want to live a regular, ordinary life now that he’s tasted action
and adventure...but who also really doesn’t want to kill or hurt anybody. Despite Dave’s
likeability, Hit Girl, who was elevated to cult-hero status when
the original Kick-Ass bowed in
theatres back in 2010, remains the heart of the film. While Moretz can’t quite
scale the stupefying heights she reached before—few could, and she did that at
age 11—she proves to be not only as delightfully quippy and badass as before,
but she’s a legitimately good actress. When Mindy is painfully rebuffed by the
popular girls at school and seeks tearful solace with Dave, you truly feel for
her, and her commitment to helping and training Dave convinces you that you
wouldn’t rather anyone else have your back.
The other major returning actor from the first film, Christopher
Mintz-Plasse is again a hoot; he’s becoming one of the most watchable actors in
the business, with his knack for dithering, wannabe bad-ass showboating. You’re
hard-pressed not to laugh at his every line, let alone each time he says his
character’s crude new nickname. Numerous
other actors make effective contributions, including Morris Chestnut as Mindy’s
guardian, Garrett M. Brown as Dave’s dad, Carrey, Lindy Booth, Claudia Lee and
Donald Faison (having a ball as the clownish Dr. Gravity).
What Doesn’t Work?
The name of the game with Kick-Ass 2 is obviously pushing the envelope, and sometimes they
push it too far. There’s a hilarious riff on teen girls’ obsessions with smoky
British boy bands, but the absurdly outrageous way Mindy exacts revenge on the
school’s queen bees for humiliating her is not only disgusting, but it’s so far
over the top it belongs in a different movie. The queen bee herself, though
well-played by Claudia Lee, also ends up a disappointment—after a first scene
stuffed with juicy dialogue, the character deteriorates quickly into a
cartoonish stereotype. Also, several of the cold-blooded
killings by the antagonists teeter on the ledge of nastiness the first film
jumped right off with the aforementioned torture spectacle; not to mention a scene where a
Korean mobster screams in pain while a dog chews on his netherparts goes on way too long. Kick-Ass 2 also unavoidably misses Nicholas Cage, whose doomed
maniac Big Daddy was one of the key cogs in the first movie, not to mention the
actor’s best role in about a decade.
Finally, I’m surprised how little of this film Jim Carrey’s
actually in. His character has an important part, he’s got some good scenes and
great lines, and he’s one of the characters you’ll remember, but I can’t help
wondering if his role was shaved on the cutting-room floor (possibly even by
his own wishes) after his opinions went public.
Content: In case you didn’t get the idea, Kick-Ass 2 is intense stuff. Bad words starting with ‘f’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ fly around like punctuation, as do euphemisms for male and female anatomy, as well as colorful descriptions of sexual acts. There are also multiple jokes deriving humor from gender, race, sexual orientation and intimate bodily functions. There’s a brief shot of a pair of topless women (several others go through the entirety of the film barely covering anything), and, of course, the violence pulls no punches. Off goes a guy’s hand, out goes a guy’s eye, headfirst under the tires of a speeding truck goes another baddie, and on and on we go. Most fans of Kick-Ass 2 will expect all this—for the uninitiated: don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Bottom Line (I
Promise): Kick-Ass 2 isn’t a
movie I’d recommend to many casual moviegoers, and it can’t reach the same superbly
fearless heights as its 2010 predecessor, but this fast, fun, funny and
outrageous film is nearly as entertaining as movies come.
Kick-Ass 2 (2013)
Written for the screen and Directed by Jeff WadlowBased on the comics by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.
Rated R
Length: 103 minutes
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