Kick-Ass 2

Director: Jeff Wadlow
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloe Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jim Carrey
Length: 103 minutes
Country: USA

How on earth do you go about reviewing something like Kick-Ass 2!? You are either:

A: A cynic who has the sense of humour of a rhino with a head cold.

Or

B: You’re taking the whole thing far too seriously, trying to find critical merit in a film played just for laughs.

I think I’m going to have to sit somewhere in the middle as the critically-appeased rhino.

Let’s set one thing straight. I enjoyed Kick-Ass 2 more than the original. A bold statement to make I know, but I think it’s because I finally understood where the films rest generically. Kick-Ass 2, whilst being as abundantly satirical as the first, contains some surprisingly dramatic moments to counter-balance the satire. In short, Kick-Ass 2 is satire laced with dramatic sass.

The clear highlight of the sequel is its strong focus on Chloe Grace Moretz’s Mindy, who is beginning to lose faith in her own alter-ego ‘Hit Girl’. The shadow of the first film is keenly present as Mindy struggles with continuing the superhero legacy of her father and reclaiming the normal teenage life she never had, under the guidance of her dad’s former colleague, Marcus. She is a complete critical mine-field of a character. Her characterisation in the first film as an eleven-year old assassin met with something of outrage from press outlets. These outlets will continue react with outrage as the sequel still involves her in obscenely violent action sequences.

The sequel favours some very character-driven scenes while Dave must face the consequences of his Kick-Ass mask

Hit-Girl, under Jeff Wadlow’s direction and screenplay, strikes a very interesting chord in the debate of gender representation and child-stardom. While Mindy may delve into the world of teenage sexual politics and high-school dramas, she will always be an anomaly. The seasoned fighter and tough-nut is not, and more importantly, should not, fit into the world of fake, image-obsessed teenagers. Her Hit-Girl pseudonym does not fetishize violence or sexualise minors, but  rather the hyperbolic universe she inhabits makes her a figurehead for female independence. Hit Girl’s battle with the Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina) whose butch and deep-voiced demeanour is something of a feminist battle. I read the scene as Hit-Girl’s struggle to defeat a very one-dimensional and narrow-mindedly ‘masculine’ idea for a female who wants to obtain super status. Mindy’s characterisation, for the majority of the film, isn’t driven by her attachment to men, unlike Night-Bitch (Lindy Booth).

That is not to say Mindy’s dialogue isn’t at times dreadfully disappointing and threatens to extinguish some of the interesting gender issues at work here. One scene, heavily trailed, features Mindy astride a moving van giving hell to the bad-guys and she announces her arrival by shouting “game on cock-suckers”. What!? Is being called homosexual (or is she calling them girls!?) an appropriate arse-kicking insult from Mindy’s character? Nope. So scenes like that are a great shame.

The titular character Dave (Aaron Johnson), under the alias of Kick-Ass continues to impress with a sound performance of shrewd comic-timing. The events of the film and Dave’s particular narrative itself are actually genuinely shocking at times. The sequel favours some very character-driven scenes while Dave must face the consequences of his Kick-Ass mask. The film also explores the way a niche occurrence, such as the arrival of real-life superheroes Kick-Ass and Red-Mist in the first film, can develop into a cult following because of media attention. The superhero team led by Jim Carrey as the delightfully farcical Colonel Stars and Stripes helps to give voice to how all sorts of  characters can jump on the new-craze bandwagon of heroism and villainy.

I did really enjoy what Kick-Ass 2 had to offer and I applaud its attempts at gender analysis, whether it did so knowingly or not. However, some comic moments really aren’t funny, go too far and push to create incredulous stakes. The film’s moments of misfire can be hard to overlook but it passes as an entertaining two hours and manages to shock, amuse and impress in equal measures. Give it a go.

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