04/22/10

I know I promised a return to formatted columns this week, but first, I’m bursting at the seams with a movie-lover rant about a new film called Kick-Ass. I’ll start by saying that, until it was actually playing on screen before my eyes, I figured it a candidate for the year’s worst film. Just seeing stills and the trailer had me laughing at how incongruous it looked. I figured it’d be as good as, say, Surf Ninjas. Maybe you’re feeling the same way … keep reading. 

I live for this feeling. After my third Kick-Ass viewing in one weekend I left the theater as buzzed as ever, ready for a fourth viewing. The film has been described as a “Kill Bill meets Superbad” hybrid that is also a comic book film with little kids and Nic Cage. Sure, that description will work on the average viewer, but I see much more here. For example, the cinematography is masterful throughout, especially during the fight sequences, which remind of Robert Richardson’s work. Also, the way New York City is filmed (as well as one very memorable chase scene) brings to mind Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express, taking its look from the legendary Christopher Doyle. The film looks beautiful, front to back.

Director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) took from a very diverse set of films for the style of Kick-Ass, some obvious, some not so much. He uses music very successfully (imagine Greg Mottola picking the songs for a Robert Rodriguez film); provides a more offbeat version of superhero lore (Hal Haberman’s little seen Special comes to mind); offers plenty of great teen hangout moments that remind of “Freaks and Geeks”; and even manages to make the NYC and gangster elements of the film seem nearly as dark, dingy and sweeping as Christopher Nolan’s great The Dark Knight.

While watching Kick-Ass the second time, the improbable mash-up masterfulness of it all set in. I felt as if it was 1992 and I was seeing John Woo’s Hard Boiled for the first time. Imagine the action of Woo’s The Killer (mixed with touches of Kill Bill) if it were filmed by Doyle and directed by the color-obsessed Kar-wai. Oh yeah, and it features a little girl who has an even cooler “action face” than old school Choy Yun-Fat. Unthinkable that all of these things would come together and work, right?

During my third viewing I started picking up more on why so many critics and fans are already comparing the film to Pulp Fiction. It’s not that it resembles Tarantino’s masterpiece all that much, but it treats action in a similar way and offers the same kind of nuance. It’s also bizarre in a very similar edgy sort of way. But, all that said, this is pretty straight forward storytelling, unlike QT’s non-linear approach. I walked out of the theater with the same kind of buzz Pulp and the Kill Bill films gave me. So, yeah, I suppose Kick-Ass is kinda/sorta the high school version of Tarantino, Vaughn‘s strength being his ability to make tasty smoothies out of fruit, gravel, fire and cocaine.

But, you ask, is the film as amoral as the great Roger Ebert implies it is? Well, half the story is about a man who teaches his young daughter to kill the gangsters who ruined his life and the other half is about a teenage dork who fumbles through big life changes, killing gangsters along the way. But hey, this is an R-rated movie, not an after school special. So shove it, Ebert.

One last thing: there’s a fight sequence here that will likely go down as one of the most classic scenes of 2010, and almost certainly the most enjoyable and masterful. I’m still buzzing from it hours later.

Box Office Buzz: Here we go, in order, the Top 5 films from last weekend, each followed by how much they made and a ScreenTime-issued grade: How To Train Your Dragon ($20 million, C-); Kick-Ass ($19.8 million, A); Date Night ($17.3 million, B-); Death at a Funeral ($17 million, D+); Clash of the Titans ($15.8 million, D).

New This Weekend: Rom-com The Back-Up Plan, starring J-Lo (looking somehow more hungry - and beautiful - than ever), opens on the most screens and will likely do the best of this week’s new films. Surely a film that people will either love or hate. The Losers and Oceans also open and the awesome-looking Paper Man, starring Jeff Daniels, begins to test.

Written by G. William Locke