The carnage was over the top, but 2010’s Kick-Ass also offered clever critique on our obsession with costumed crime fighters — and all of it was delivered with an amoral glee that was questionable, but fun. The titular hero was an adolescent with no superpowers who took to costumed vigilantism with disastrous results, till he joined forces with the ace crime-fighting pair of Big Daddy and Hit-Girl (Nicolas Cage and the then pre-teen Chloë Grace Moretz).
Moretz was quite the revelation as the foul-mouthed, purple-haired, pre-adolescent who cursed and killed with equal fluidity and no remorse. Matthew Vaughn’s original — based on the Mark Millar comic — was shocking, yet had a freshness to it.
The sequel is neither fresh nor entertaining nor provocative. Kick-Ass 2 can’t decide what it wants to be — a satirical riff on our preoccupation with superheroes or a sexed-up coming-of-age story? A vulgar comedy or an exploitative take on the action/adventure genre? It winds up as an unholy mess.
Where can I begin? Everything about the sequel is misjudged — from the heavy-handed tone to its sexual landscape. Kick-Ass 2 opens some three years after the original. Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), now a 17-year-old high-schooler still dons a green suit and calls himself Kick-Ass after school hours. He and a bunch of inept costumed vigilantes find a rallying point in Colonel Stars and Stripes — a crook-turned-born-again Christian and crime fighter, played by an unrecognisable Jim Carrey. Carrey, incidentally, had a conscience attack about the film’s violence and refused to promote it.
The counterpoint to the good teens is the newly villainous bad teen, Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), formerly known as Red Mist. His goal is to track down Kick-Ass, who had murdered his father in the previous film. But, realising his physical limitations as a supervillain, he recruits trained killers — including the genuinely frightening Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina) — to do his dirty work.
There is no lightness of touch; as the blood and body count escalate, Tarantino seems like a sensitive, restrained director in comparison.
The climax is in the villain’s lair, whose décor includes a real shark in aquarium. The costumes are cartoonish but the increasing sadism is not, and the combination is unpleasant. The only redeeming feature is Moretz, reprising her role as Mindy a.k.a. Hit-Girl. She continues to display enormous star power, but even she can’t prop up the crumbling edifice; Kick-Ass 2 is rotten to the core.
Genre: (Misguided) Action/Adventure
Director: Jeff Wadlow
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jim Carrey
Storyline: Costumed teens — and some grownups — kill and maim each other in the name of revenge and good versus evil.
Bottomline: Unpleasant mix of realistic violence and cartoonish characters
