Kick-Ass 2

I went into Kick-Ass 2 expecting gore, guts, bad taste but awesome superheroes. What did I get? Gore, guts, bad taste, awesome superheroes, and a pretty great story too...

Ironic that I'm posting this review, considering I just posted an article about the use of Rotten Tomatoes, and here's a movie that I really enjoyed that's rocking a 28% on the site.

Critics are saying that the movie is violent. Jim Carrey himself pulled support for his own film recently as well. To that I say - seriously? It's titled Kick-Ass. The comic books are violent, the idea is violent. It's main villain is named The Mother Fucker. Doesn't that say it all about the level of violence? I'm kindof surprised actually that this is only now being called too violent, considering there were far fewer action scenes in this film compared to the first.

Critics are also saying that this film lacked humor compared to the first. I mean, sure. Maybe it lacked the same style of humor. But I had no problem seeing this as a continuation of the first movie. In this film, the jokes become fewer as the film gets more and more serious, more and more based in a sense of reality. Perhaps not a reality of what was happening physically, but a reality of what this would really be like if it did/could happen. If this was to happen in real life, I can see the emotions being the way they are, the reactions from law enforcement being reasonable. It was pretty crazy to watch all of these people with no super powers fighting each other to a very real feeling death, no moments of redemption or moments of potential life. For the most part, we saw realistic death. And more importantly, I felt it was more poignant that way.

I very much liked the superhero characters in this. Colonel Stars and Stripes, played by Jim Carrey, was a particularly fun character, and one I hadn't seen before - a violent but honest ex mafia man turned born-again Christian? That's definitely original to me. I loved the idea of Battle Guy being one of Kick-Ass's friends without either of them realizing who the other one was. Night Bitch was a throwaway character for the most part, but she did manage to have one particularly brutal scene that showed us a great villain character from The Mother Fucker - one who was thinking far more evil than he could actually perform. Chloe Grace Moretz as Hit Girl is particularly great. For the first time, we saw a pretty great portrayal of a girl who was facing high school for the first time the same way a superhero would be on patrol for the first time. Sure, it was over the top and silly at points, but I very much felt for her and wanted her to embrace Hit Girl again, having at the beginning of the film promised to her guardian she would never do it again. We genuinely cheer for her to put her costume back on, and it never becomes hackneyed or frustrating as to why she just doesn't.

I thought the action was super exciting, never boring, always leaving something really cool to look at, especially any scene with Hit Girl. We saw fighting that succeeded in making her look like a badass, but never so ungrounded in reality that we wonder how probable it is. It's Hit Girl, she can do anything damnit! And Kick-Ass himself, though in this film pretty jacked out of his mind, maintains a certain level of weakness that we loved him for in the first film but a new found level of strength to do things that he normally couldn't, and he has some great fight scenes as well.

All in all, if you're on the fence about seeing this movie, I'd say give it a shot. I'm curious to see what audience ratings look like for this movie, I have a feeling they're going to be more satisfied than the critics looking for something more intellectual. But what this film lacked in a super smart story, it made up for in a shocking amount of believability and fun. I really liked it, and I'll defend it.

Rank - 4/5