- Yet again a movie does not live up to its hype. All I’ve been hearing is about how terribly violent and funny this movie is, how envelope-pushing and boundary-expanding it is. Turns out, not so much. A lot of the truly horrific violence is either implied or showed from a distance, so I’m confused where the comments (concerns? accusations?) that this is a terribly violent movie are coming from. Of course it’s violent, but none of the actual violence is above and beyond what you’ve seen in any other Rated R action movie. And the humour? I had a couple of chuckles here and there, but does bazooka humour really still get laughs? Christ.
- So let’s talk about Chloe Moretz a.k.a. Hit Girl. I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb here in suggesting that the reason people think this is horrifically violent is that much of the really awesome violence is coming at the hands of a little girl. Take her out of the equation and the violence wouldn’t be an issue for most people. I think with a movie like this you have to take out most considerations of moral reprehensibility in order to make it work, given that our supposed heroes kill dozens of people and get away with it on the pretext of keeping the streets safe for the unarmed public, and so the issue is clearly not that she’s killing all these mob lackeys in a variety of creative ways but that it’s a little girl doing it. I’m having trouble picturing this being an issue if the character was called Hit Boy.
- Also: CUNT. Hit Girl saying this once is making people fear for our children? Seriously? Calm the hell down, people. Think about what kind of message you’re sending when you decide that the most offensive part of this movie — you know, outside of all the excessively violent murders — is when a little girl uses an expletive that is usually reserved exclusively for male discourse to be used against women in a context of shame and disgust. “Heavens no, don’t let her say that!” I vacillate on the subject of reclaiming words for use by those who have historically been the victim of prejudice through those words and I think I’d be naive to think that Hit Girl’s usage of CUNT is 100% for reclamation purposes as opposed to shock value, but for the love of god it continues to kill me that CUNT is the 100% worst expletive anyone could ever say.
As a side note, if you’re interested in etymology you should definitly check out Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language by Ruth Wajnryb. Beside being an absolutely hilarious book, it also provides a really great and vivid background on the history of swearing.
- This movie bored me because it focused on the wrong characters. Big Daddy and Hit Girl have a genuine spring board for revenge in their background so who do we focus on? The horny high school comic book geek who pretends to be gay so he can get into some girl’s pants. Horny teenage boys aren’t terribly interesting to me as characters, even if they’re supposed to be satirical.
- And speaking of which, it’s not okay to use a misunderstanding about your sexuality to become emotionally intimate with someone who would not have engaged with you on this level if you had been truthful from the beginning. The whole self-tanner scene made me pretty angry, but when Dave told Katie that he wasn’t actually gay, her lack of “Hi, you’ve completely violated my trust” made me even angrier. This is not okay.
- I did like the dinosaur stickers on Dave’s mirror, though.
- Mark Strong, casting directors who work on better movies need to discover you so that you can stop being in stupid stuff. They are wasting your considerable talents.
- The colour palette stuff they were doing with the D’Amico family was aesthetically pleasing.
- Nicolas Cage should not have been the best (okay, second best) part of this for me, because I totally loved him in this in a way that I have not loved him since The Rock. While obviously the relationship between Big Daddy and Hit Girl was not terribly healthy (see above under “moral reprehensibility”), it’s nice to see a parent taking an active role in their child’s life? Loved that part of his disguise entailed putting on moustache extensions.
- I never understand when they try to disguise Toronto and then leave huge Tim Hortons signs everywhere in the background. Or the Sam the Record Man sign, which is still highly identifiable even though it’s not turned on anymore.
- If I thought it was weird to watch a movie in the neighbourhood it was filmed in when I saw Chloe, it’s even weirder to watch this inside the movie theatre that Chris and his dad go to / Dave and his friends are leaving.
- The hype on this one is seriously misplaced.
Kick-Ass
This is the horrifically violent movie everyone is raving about?
IMDB Plot Synopsis Dave Lizewski is an unnoticed high school student and comic book fan who one day decides to become a super-hero, even though he has no powers, training or meaningful reason to do so.
Can’t expect too much from a movie based on a Mark Millar work.
“Mark Strong, casting directors who work on better movies need to discover you so that you can stop being in stupid stuff. They are wasting your considerable talents.”–ha!!
Though, his performance was one of the more enjoyable aspects of the movie, for me.