If you look at Chloe Grace Moretz's IMDB page, there is a discussion on there about her on screen body count. It is currently around 56, and those are confirmed on screen kills as opposed to kills you don't actually see. She is also playing Carrie in the now completed remake of....well Carrie. They are estimating about 20 on screen kills in that movie, so she is thought to be in the 70s by years end. This is interesting because Uma Thurman is apparently thought to be the deadliest women in western cinema mostly due to the Kill Bill movies. Chloe will be on par, if not past her at age 16. So think about that for a moment, and understand 40 or so of those are from the first Kick-Ass. Now I want to tell you something else I read online a few days ago. Kick-Ass 2 is more Mean Girls then Mean Girls 2 was. Now consider both of those thoughts put together. Mean girls meets violence and killing, does that sound like a movie you want to see?
The story picks up shortly after the first film, I don't know exactly how long....but I would say no more then a year or so. Dave, or Kick-Ass has stopped fighting crime and is currently trying to be a normal kid. He hates it, life is boring when you are not getting punched in the face. Since he stopped though, others have taken his place. Kick-Ass brought about a movement, one that now has many other every day people putting on costumes and taking to the street. Seeing all this only makes him want to get back out there, to feel that rush again. Mindy or Hit-Girl is in a similar situation. With her dad dead, she is now living with his friend Marcus who is trying to raise her to be normal. He is aware of Hit-Girl and tries to curb that side of her, it doesn't work. After Kick-Ass begs her to team up though, she starts training him. This was nice to see as Kick-Ass pretty much spent the first movie just flailing away. He won the encounters he did thanks to his ability to simply absorb punishment and outlast people. Now he is training and learning how to actually fight. Hit-Girl is making him better, and helping him become the hero he wants to be.
Kick-Ass is a comic, the first movie comprised of the original run. The second movie is comprised of the second Kick-Ass series, as well as the Hit-Girl mini series. What this means is you get 2 stories that sort of intertwine, but mostly are independent of each other. Honestly I felt like it was pulled off alright, though it does create some weird pacing at times. The story outline above is the beginning of the movie, we then get the Hit-Girl books which deviates from it quite a bit. Her Guardian catches her and forces her to give up the costume, and we get a story about her trying to fit in at school. Her father took her childhood away, and left her with very little social skills. This is where the Mean Girls reference comes into play. Looking at reviews, these two stories seemed to be a point of contention. Either you liked it, or was the reason the movie sucked. Seeing Dave go off and join his own team though, while Mindy tries to be normal works though. They keep in touch, and their stories come together nicely. You get the super hero stuff you expect from Dave. And Mindy brings the comedy and humor you expect in the franchise. The only way her parts could have been better, was if she dropped a "fetch" in there somewhere. The lighthearted portions act as a nice buffer to everything else, and I really enjoyed seeing both stories play out.
Remember that first paragraph where I talked about Violence? Well this movie has lots of it, though that is to be expected. I would say they kill less people then the first film, though that doesn't mean less blood. With Big Daddy gone we start to get more toned down heroes. Not ones who use firearms as their main offense, but ones who want to help in other ways. Kick-Ass's team spends most of their time doing Charity work. Even Hit-Girl manages to keep her kills in the single digits from what I recall. This was something I didn't expect, but really enjoyed. They would disable people, and leave them for the cops. That all changes though when the villain emerges. The "Mother-Fucker" proves that money really is the answer to most of life's problems. He hires some serious bad people and starts his own gang basically. Their goal is simply to kill Kick-Ass. If you remember from the first movie, Kick-Ass killed Mother Fucker's father in the final fight. When costumed people on the street go from charity work to killing people, the cops decide to step in and put a stop to it. It is also where the movie takes a hard turn, no more high school antics and social drama. We get attempted rape, we get murders, and we get some crazy action scenes. The movie gets emotional, and becomes oddly enough one of the more realistic and better super hero stories I have seen in cinema. Avengers was a good movie, but it felt fake. In the first Kick-Ass we had 3 heroes, only two of them make it to the sequel. Bad guys don't play fair, and they are out for blood. Look at Iron-Man, they will never kill Tony. They will never kill Rhodes, they may injure him greatly....but not kill. Hell even in Iron-Man 3 you knew Pepper was good. It is rare that super hero movies have those kind of consequences in them. In the last third of so of the film, Kick-Ass starts to deal with those consequences. It is all fun and games until somebody stands against you, then bad stuff starts to happen. I won't say what exactly happens, but they made it more meaningful then any marvel film has managed to do so far.
It is nice being able to write about a movie minutes after you see it, it is still fresh in your mind. It also makes it harder to focus...I want to talk about the ending, I want to talk about the geek culture portrayed by it. I want to go into the humor, and how the acting was. However if you have seen the first one you know what to expect. I did enjoy the new faces though, and seeing Donald Faison was a treat. I somehow missed he was in the movie, so when he popped up as Dr. Gravity, I got pretty excited. If you liked him in Scrubs, you will like him here. Lindy Booth does well as the female hero Night-Bitch, though her role was not large. And who doesn't like Clark Duke? The guy is great in everything he does, or at least everything I have seen. I honestly can not think of any role that was poorly handled as far as acting goes.
Jim Carey was one of the bigger names in the film, he has however recently come out against it. Basically he says he is not ashamed of the film, but recent events have changed how he views it. He is talking about the violence, and the fact that kids kill and are targeted in the movie. It is a valid concern, though reading any message board would make you think he said far worse. He did well in his role, and I enjoyed seeing him do something different for him. Violence though is a issue in this film that should be addressed. If seeing people cut down or blood in general bothers you, skip on it. It is by no means one of the gorier films I have seen, but it does earn its R rating. High school kids kill other people, they get beat to hell themselves. Consider that more of a word of caution then anything else though.
So we have violence, humor.....dark humor, and a actual strong story with real consequences. The action is well done, and the final fight was both uplifting and brutal. They even leave it open ended for a possible Kick-Ass 3. Actually after a quick search it has already been announced, and it will be the final film in the series. I will see that movie, I will see this one again. What more do I need to say then?
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