Saw Kick Ass (thanks, Paul!) It was tremendously fun. It was another of those super-hero-related films. It follows a nerdy (but inexplicably jacked and bull-necked) highschool kid who decides to become a superhero for no good reason (I seriously can't remember why. It just seems like a good idea to him.) Then he runs afoul of a mobster and teams up with another, far crazier, super-hero father-daughter duo. The film does a tiny bit of super-hero-deconstruction early on. I noticed that the kid links his actions with that of a serial killer in a voice-over. There may have been some other stuff but deconstruction is not on this film's mind. Awesome shit is.
I remember when this film came out there was great debate over whether its more realistic violence is supposed to condemn or celebrate the cartoonish violence in super-hero films. I'm pretty sure they've just exchanged the unrealistically clean, comic-book, biff-pow violence of comic books for the unrealistically messy and quick blood-splatters and one-shots of action movies. The violence is made sexy and celebrated, so be warned if you're the sort to tut at glamorous violence. The daughter half of the father-daughter duo exists only to deliver on the hilarious joke of a little girl grimly kicking ass. Again, this film is clearly far less concerned with substance than it is with style.
The film is also hilarious. It turns a refreshingly jaundiced eye toward the wish-fulfillment of the super-hero genre. The protagonist's dreams of cool one-liners and karate chops are contrasted with his squeaky voice and spastic flailing. He attempts to get the girl, only for her to think he's gay. (On that note, gay is used a few times in a pejorative sense. It's my turn to tut, I guess.) There's also some fun freeze-frame fun. In a shoot-out in the mobster's library, a flash of a bullet hitting some books reveals that the whole library is just facades of books and that the mobster's "library" is purely for show. It's super-fast and hilarious. At one point the characters check a spy-cam and we watch its owner quickly scroll past several videos of girls taking their tops off.
So I liked this film. It's clever enough to be entertaining but not enough to be thought-provoking. It's also vastly entertaining. Normally I keep bumping my mouse to see how much of the film I have left. With this one, I think I checked for the first time an hour and a half in. The whole thing is just loads of fun. Check it out.
If you read the graphic novel, there is a bit more emphasis on the notion that people who put on costumes to go out and "fight crime" are either really fucked up, or have no idea what they are getting into (possibly both). It is definitely emphasized that this is not normal human behavior. However, there is still a large amount of violence glorification, so the message is still mixed.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! I think there is an element of that in the film, but it is not as emphasized perhaps (I haven't read the comic book. I'll have to take your word for it.) I should have picked up on the kid (Kick Ass) being out of his depth and the pseudo-batman being clearly some kind of crazy.
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