Kick-Ass

            With so many superhero movies that have come out in the last 10 years it is hard to make one that is different and unique from all of the others, besides that of the superhero. This task is even harder when your movie is centered around superheroes that don't even exist in the fictional world yet. This is the route the movie Kick-Ass takes, and I have to say...they did quite a good job at it.
             Going into this movie I had a certain expectation of what I probably would see. I knew what the general plot was about anyway. The one thing that caught my attention was its R rating. It seemed somewhat odd from viewing the trailer what in this movie could cause it to deserve an R rating. Well let me tell ya, it deserved its R rating and this movie was nothing like I thought it would be; in a good way.
             Kick-Ass stars Aaron Johnson (Nowhere Boy) as Dave Lizewski, an unnoticed high school student who is a big geek when it comes to comic books. Curious as to why no one has tried it before, Dave decides one day to become a superhero named Kick-Ass, even though he has no powers, training in fighting, or any real meaningful reason to do so.  Of course this isn't the easiest thing to just pick up and do and Dave finds that out the hard way, while also becoming famous thanks to a video phone.
              As Dave goes down this road of being a superhero he runs into some legitimate heroes, Damon McCready (Nicholas Cage), a.k.a. Big Daddy (who is a take on Adam West's Batman which is hilarious), and his 14-year-old daughter Mindy (Chloe Moretz), a.k.a. Hit Girl. He also runs into some legitimate trouble in the form of organized crime headed by Mark Strong's (Sherlock Holmes) character Frank D'Amico. Then there is the addition of one last hero named Red Mist who is played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad, Role Models) who adds another element into the tangled web of good and evil that needs to be sorted out in this movie.
              I thought this movie did quite a good job of taking everyone's back stories and motivations and tying them together in a good way. As with any superhero movie this one had a lot of action and fighting bad guys. What I didn't expect to see is how real they kept it. This isn't Batman or Superman taking down bad guys and giving them to the cops. This is a story of real people fighting other real people with knives and guns. So these heroes don't just use martial arts against you...they shoot back; and this movie wasn't afraid to show all of this violence even from the 14-year-old Hit Girl. This is why the movie is rated R.
             Overall, I enjoyed this movie a lot as it was funny and very entertaining. It was a fun take on superhero movies that stayed realistic to it's plot most of the time and went away from that when it needed to. After all it's still a superhero movie. I give it a thumbs up and 3 out of 4 stars. You can stream it instantly or get it in the mail via Netflix and your local Redbox may have it as well. Enjoy!

My next review will be on the mystery thriller All Good Things starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst