wee doors banging

Kick-Ass, if you’ve been living under a cinematic rock recently, is an action movie directed by Matthew Vaughan based on the graphic novel series of the same name created by Mark Millar. It tells the story of a normal teenager who takes it upon himself, with no superpowers, tools or training, to fight crime dressed as the “super” hero Kick-Ass. Along the way he meets some proper crimefighters in the form of Big Daddy and Hit Girl, and together they take on an organised drug gang.

I’ve seen the movie and make no mistake, it boots bottom. It’s Superbad meets Batman Begins, with a generous sprinkling of Kill Bill. Kick-Ass is not a serious movie with deep meanings and profound things to say, but then I don’t think it’s meant to be. What it is though is enormously entertaining in an over the top comic book kind of way. Great performances from the young cast and old codger Nicolas Cage, perfect comic timing and a kick-ass soundtrack make it a fun way to spend two hours.

But Christopher Tookey of the Daily Mail disagrees. He thinks it’s child pornography.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead. Also some swearing.

"Who are you dude?" ... "I'm Kick-Ass"

I don’t read the Mail, I try hard to avoid it and the drivel it spouts, but sometimes you click on a link and can’t stop reading what’s behind it. Like watching a car crash. Usually when this happens I calm down and move on, but with the Kick-Ass fresh in my mind I found myself absolutely incredulous and increasingly enraged at the vile rubbish I was reading. I wondered if Tookey was talking about the same film.

The reviewer is allowed, of course, to dislike a movie. That’s fine. Call it bone headed, run it down for not providing clever social commentary, whatever. In response however I’ll point out that it’s based on a comic book, called Kick-Ass, about asses, kicking and combinations thereof, so what social commentary and cleverness does he expect? I bet there weren’t enough fight scenes in Schindler’s List for him either.

It’s the spin and outright errors used to support an obvious agenda that I object to. Let’s start with this.

[Hit Girl] believes that her vigilante dad (played, simplistically, for laughs by Nicolas Cage) is a hero just as much at the end as she did at the beginning [...] Her attitude towards him doesn’t mature, which makes her pathetic, rather than cool.

Firstly, Nicolas Cage modelled his character’s mannerisms on a classic TV superhero, Adam West’s 1960′s Batman. Secondly, Hit Girl does indeed believe her father is a hero, perhaps wrongly I’ll grant you, but the end of the movie happens very soon after her father’s death, in terms of both screen time and time elapsed in the movie world, so she’s hardly had time to mature or been shown to do so. She is however shown attempting to start a normal life by going to school.

I’ll take care of this little point now.

Underage sex isn’t a laugh. Recent government figures revealed that in this country more than 8,000 children under the age of 16 conceive every year.

Good then that the only two characters shown to have a sexual relationship are at least 17, possibly 18 years old, and have spent the movie building a relationship based first on friendship. How terribly irresponsible of the movie makers.

Hit Girl from Kick-Ass. Is this sexy? Christopher Tookey of the Daily Mail thinks so.

Now the big one: Hit Girl as a sex symbol.

[...] it breaks one of the last cinematic taboos by making the most violent, foul-mouthed and sexually aggressive character, Hit-Girl, an 11-year-old.

Sexually aggressive? There was nothing sexual at all about Hit Girl. She is, as Tookey points out, eleven years old. I don’t recall her being sexual at all. Maybe I missed that part.

The movie’s writers want us to see Hit-Girl not only as cool, but also sexy [...] Paedophiles are going to adore her. One of the film’s creepiest aspects is that she’s made to look as seductive as possible [...] fetishised in precisely the same way as Angelina Jolie in the Lara Croft movies, and Halle Berry in Catwoman.

No no no no. A thousand times no, you sick fuck. Who does Hit Girl seduce? In what way is she fetishised (if that’s even a word)? I must have missed those parts too. She looks like a little girl dressed as a superhero, because she’s, you know, a little girl superhero, and furthermore her costume is in no way revealing or sexualised like the adult superhero examples quoted.

As if that isn’t exploitative enough, she’s also shown in a classic schoolgirl pose, in a short plaid-skirt with her hair in bunches, but carrying a big gun.

Yes indeed she dresses as an innocent schoolgirl. It’s a disguise. She dresses as an innocent schoolgirl because she’s trying to look like an innocent schoolgirl, in order to gain access to the drug gang’s headquarters building. She also very quickly changes back into her superhero costume once the disguise has served its purpose. Oh wait, that’s the sexy superhero costume, isn’t it?

Oh, and one of the male teenage characters acknowledges that he’s attracted to her.

What the character actually says is “I love her”, which in context clearly means “I think she’s awesome” after observing Hit Girl single-handedly taking down a room full of bad guys. There’s a big, big difference between that and “I want to have sexual relations with that underage girl” as Tookey’s spin implies. In fact the next line is “Dude, she’s like 11 years old!”, acknowledging Hit Girl is too young for that sort of thing.

[...] violence of the most extreme kind [...] is presented with calculated flippancy, as funny, admirable and (most perversely of all) sexually arousing.

The violence, while realistic and gory, is so obviously comic book over the top that anyone with half a clue can’t help but view it as slapstick. I mean, shooting a man off the top of skyscraper with a bazooka? Jetpacks with miniguns? Come on. But sexually arousing? I’ll watch it again to be sure, but in the meantime I’d appreciate it if someone could point out anywhere in Kick-Ass where any characters get off on the violence? High-fives on battles won is as close as it gets.

Do we really want to live, for instance, in a culture when the torture and killing of a James Bulger or Damilola Taylor is re-enacted by child actors for laughs?

Again it’d be great if someone could point out where in Kick-Ass this happens? It’s a cheap, sensationalist shot to include the Bulger or Taylor killings in a movie review. Shame on you, Tookey.

The point, I think, of Tookey’s review is as follows:

Kick-Ass is not the harmless fun it pretends to be. Yes, it’s lightweight and silly, but it’s also cynical, premeditated and mindbogglingly irresponsible. And in Hit-Girl, the film-makers have created one of the most disturbing icons and damaging role-models in the history of cinema.

A role model? Really? No more or less than any other obviously extreme fictional character I think. And for who exactly? Kick-Ass has a 15 rating in the UK, so I’d wager that anyone who sees it isn’t going to model their future actions on an 11 year old character from a comic book movie.

Tookey’s piece is not a review, it’s a thinly disguised diatribe, typical of the Daily Mail, pushing various sensationalist buttons to sell papers. Kick-Ass was just unlucky enough to have been a timely framework to hang the disguise from.

Have you seen Kick-Ass? What was your impression? Fun comic book romp, or seedy excuse for getting child pornography into mainstream cinemas? Let me know.