KICK-ASS (2010) (***1/2)

This comic book adaptation is not for everyone, especially little kids. Those that hated it really hated it. The film is violent as can be and puts an 11-year-old girl right in the middle of that violence as a gleeful participant. Defenders can tell detractors that they need to lighten up — it's only satire. But the detractors will come back and say how can you get any joy out of seeing a little girl beaten savagely by an adult? Well I'll make my attempt to tell you how.

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson, NOWHERE BOY) is just your average high school student who hangs with his friends after school at a comic book shop. He wonders why out of all the people who love comics why no one ever decided to try to be one. He freely admits that it’s a crazy idea because as he says his only superpower is to be invisible to girls. But he keeps fantasizing about the idea and like a serial killer one day fantasizing isn't enough. He confronts a pair of thieves and ends up in the hospital for months. But after he recovers, the urge is still there. He's like an alcoholic only addicted to putting on a green and yellow scuba suit and walking the streets looking for trouble. Well trouble finds him again and this time there are teens around with cell phones, making Kick-Ass an Internet sensation.

Meanwhile, cold-hearted gangster Frank D'Amico is having problems with a coke shipment. His lackey claims Batman stole it. Turns out that the thug isn't lying. Damon Mcready aka Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage, GHOST RIDER) dresses up much like the Caped Crusader and has a young sidekick as well — his daughter Mindy known as Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz, DIARY OF A WIMPY KID). Mindy says for her birthday she wants puppy and her dad looks disappointed. Then she says, "just kidding" and reveals she wants switchblades. Big Daddy has sadistically trained his little girl into a killing machine. He has his reasons for wanting D'Amico dead. Now the problem is D'Amico thinks his troublesome vigilante is Kick-Ass, who still takes a beating more than he gives.

The film presents a simple question — why don't real people become superheroes? It goes on to answer that question clearly. You'd have to be freakin' crazy. The bad guys out there are not playing dress-up. Kick-Ass isn't skilled; he's lucky at best. His superhero dreams are a way to feel less nameless. So many kids do the same by forming a garage band or acting in the school play, because they can put on a persona and not have to take risks as themselves. Dave puts on the suit to get an injection of confidence. He wants to connect with others like him so he starts a webpage where he meets fellow masked teen vigilante The Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, SUPERBAD), whose got a bank account to fund his superhero toys. Getting beaten bloody actually makes the cute Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca, TV's HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER) notice Dave. The only problem is she thinks he's gay, which is another persona he embraces because he can't be himself. Dave is trying to find something that makes his life worthwhile.

Where Kick-Ass is a kid acting stupid, Big Daddy and Hit Girl are trained and heavily armed, but they're still mortal. Big Daddy's friend Sgt. Marcus Williams (Omari Hardwick, MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA) questions what kind of childhood he is giving his daughter. Big Daddy has desensitized Hit Girl to the point that when she knives a thug, she sees it like a videogame. After everything she's done, could Hit Girl ever be a normal high school student? Her father has made her badass, but at what cost?

Johnson is a perfect choice for Kick-Ass. His crackly voice and ah-shucks look make the character believable as an alienated high schooler and as a wanna-be superhero. Cage is great as Big Daddy. He puts on a Mr, Rogers smile when talking with his daughter about guns and killing like its sugar in the cough syrup. In the suit, he talks like Adam West from the BATMAN TV series. Moretz is the center of attention in the film as the half-pint assassin. She's a foul-mouthed dynamo. But her joy with carnage has a oft-kilter feel as well.

Kick-Ass represents the naïve desire to be a superhero. Becoming a hero to single-handedly stop wrong. Big Daddy and Hit Girl are the dark side. Revenge fueled murder. Leading up to the traditional ending, where Kick-Ass and Hit Girl storm the castle, I wished for something more original to bring the pieces together, but what I did feel wasn't excitement like scenes such as these usually elicit. I felt fear. Do these kids really know what they are getting into? The film is based on a series so it doesn't take it to the most realistic dark conclusion, but it hints at it between over-the-top wish fulfillment. But take note to how the heroes get saved when their backs are to the wall. Says something about the odds these heroes are betting on. They should take on Vegas next.

So is it immoral? Morality is a fuzzy world and it will always be up to the viewer to judge something through their own lens. Gene Siskel would have said so because he felt it was wrong in any way to put children in danger in films. But taking things to that extreme would mean Dickens is immoral. I look at it from a universal perspective no matter the age of those involved. What is the view point of the film and the characters. Director Matthew Vaughn might be having fun with it all, but he also shows the harsh realities of vigilante justice no matter how trained you are. Is that less responsible than sending a teen Robin out to pummel villains in the name of good ole fun? Bloody revenge is always a gray point of morality in films. But whose reasoning for heroism succeeds in the end -- Hit Girl or Kick-Ass -- and which one is more noble?

This isn't for 11-year-olds to watch and pretend they're superheroes, it's for adults to see what it would be like to be a superhero at the age when they pretended to be superheroes. Some in the audience will mindlessly chuckle like Beavis and Butthead, but I've always been of the opinion that a filmmaker can't worry about the lowest common denominator. The more observant viewer will feel a range of emotions, some not all that comfortable. It's fantasy and pitch black humor and twisted reality mixed.