Kick-Ass 2 (2013)
Certified: 15
Duration: 103 minutes
Directed by: Jeff Wadlow
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jim Carrey, Clark Duke, Olga Kurkulina, Lindy Booth, John Leguizamo, Morris Chestnut
KRS release
Aaron Taylor-Johnson returns as Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass who would like to resume his superhero antics.
In fact, he gets Mindy McReady/ Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) to give him extra training in martial arts and weapon use.
Mindy is, however, passing through a tough time now that her father is gone. She wants to live life as a normal teenage girl, yet she also wants to be a vigilante.
Kick-Ass eventually joins a group of fans who have banded together as costumed vigilantes, with no powers.
The Justice Forever team is made up of leader Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey); Night Bitch (Lindy Booth), a sexy vigilante whose sister had been murdered; Insect Man (Robert Emms), who is gay and has no mask; Dr Gravity (Donald Faison), who carries a mean bat; Battle Guy (Clark Duke), Dave’s classmate; and the duo known as Tommy’s Mum and Tommy’s Dad (Steven Mackintosh and Monica Dolan) who are parents whose son has been killed.
The group also faces a team of supervillains led by Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) whose father, the mobster from the first film, had been killed by Kick-Ass.
Chris starts calling himself The Motherf*cker and, along with the likes of Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina), he is intent on wreaking havoc and destroying all heroes.
When I saw Kick-Ass in 2010, I was blown away by the film’s pacing and its take on costumed vigilantes, superheroes, fanboys and, most of all, by the performance of Moretz.
The film has a certain savoir faire to it, especially in the kinetic frenzy of its action sequences
The fact that it was an adaptation of a series of comic books by Mark Millar, who is one of the industry’s best writers, already gave it a strong starting point.
The first film led to various other movies that focused on superheroes in the real world and who had no powers. On the comic book front, Millar pleased the fans with a limited series dedicated to Hit Girl and another one titled Kick-Ass 2.
The movie version was never going to be far off and, thankfully enough, the second outing proves that wine actually gets better by age.
The second film still focuses on the ultra-stylised violence, on the heroics and, even more importantly, on the characters.
All in all, there is more flesh to this film and, while Moretz is once again deadly, she leaves space for the rest of the cast to shine.
Another enjoyable factor is seeing all the staples and traits of the comic book superhero world come to life. This is perfectly embodied in Mintz-Plasse’s character who is a villain that comes along with all the paraphernalia that money can buy.
One of the best things about this picture is seeing how much the characters have grown from the first film and keep on developing on screen.
This is nowhere more felt than in the way Hit Girl tries to actually be normal and join girls her age.
The film has a certain savoir faire to it, especially in the kinetic frenzy of its action sequences. Besides, Kurkulina as Mother Russia gives the bad guy a real edge, especially in the way she takes things to heart.
This time around, however, the film has a depth to it that goes beyond the flashy visuals of the first outing.
An original and strong piece of celluloid, Kick-Ass 2 lets us see what makes the people under the mask tick and delivers much more than any sequel usually does.