FilmQuest 2012 (8/30): 'Con Air':

"Beautiful? Sunsets are beautiful, newborn babies are beautiful. This... this is fucking spectacular!" If I hadn't seen Michael Bay's 'The Rock' the day before there's a good chance producer Jerry Bruckheimer's next film - 1997's Simon West directed 'Con Air' - would have seemed like the epitome of hi-octane. However, seen in the shadow of Bay's quote-a-second action flick it seemed comparatively sedate.

But this is odd because 'Con Air', the latest entry in my rapidly expanding "FilmQuest 2012" series, is arguably more extreme than Bay's film in terms of raw ingredients: this time Nicolas Cage has daft hair and a thick Cajun accent, he gets to run (and jump) away from explosions with far greater frequency, and the cartoonishly over the top villains are brilliantly cast (including Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, Danny Trejo and Dave Chappelle) with the scenery-chewing John Malkovich in top form. It also has a suitably BIG premise: the world's most loathsome scumbags (notorious rapists, drug lords and mass murderers) hijack a prison transport plane, making it hell in the air. There is, of course, one good man aboard. Meanwhile the authorities on the ground (led by John Cusack) bicker over whether to shoot the plane out of the sky or trust the one good man to restore order.

These cops argue over whose jurisdiction the whole incident is whilst, over the next hour and a bit, pretty much everything explodes and people are battered, shot, stabbed, crushed, impaled and burned with regularity. There is a pitched gun battle between the cons and soldiers in a plane scrapyard, an attack helicopter chase through the Grand Canyon, a crash landing on the Las Vegas Strip (with landmarks destroyed), and a high-speed chase between police motorcycles (commandeered by the Cage and Cusack dream-team, no less) and a rampaging convict-carrying fire truck - complete with climactic good versus evil fistfight on the roof of the moving vehicle. This is a film where a plane tows a sports car into the air for chrissakes, prompting the line "on any other day that might seem strange". But the best line? "Sorry boss, but there's only two men I trust. One of them's me. The other's not you."

As with 'The Rock' every aspect of the story is heightened to its greatest, most ludicrous possible level to ratchet up the drama and punctuate the stakes for all involved. For instance, Nicolas Cage's Cameron Poe isn't just a mild-mannered convict due to leave prison after an 8 year stretch, on the wrong plane at the wrong time (on a story level this might have been enough). No, he's a decorated former soldier who returned home from serving his country to find his pregnant wife (Monica Potter) being pestered by a despicable drunk, who he accidentally kills after being attacked.

He's then assured by a lawyer that he'll only serve a year if he pleads guilty, but the judge gives Poe no less than 7 years because he's a soldier - engendering a sense that he's a victim of rough justice. Yet he's never the slightest bit angry or twisted: a benevolent convict who shares his sweeties with the kindly diabetic man in his bunk (Mykelti Williamson) and writes regular letters home to his young daughter. Oh, and the hijacking of his flight home doesn't merely jeopardise his freedom - it also means he might miss his daughter's birthday party.

The ingredients are there but I think it's held by the fact that West, unlike Bay, is not any sort of visual stylist. Whilst 'The Rock' is rendered even more lovably ridiculous by all the American flags and fast-cutting of its uber-trashy auteur, 'Con Air' just isn't quite as intense. And if 'The Rock' was an inspired once in a lifetime mess of various jobbing writers (including Tarantino and Sorkin) then 'Con Air' is a much more coherent but infinitely less romantic piece from a single screenwriter: Scott Rosenberg. There are some quotable lines ("Put... the bunny... back... in the box"), but nothing on the level of 'The Rock'. Though I accept that this is an unfair and arbitrary standard of measure. Like I said, I saw both more or less back-to-back.

One aspect of 'Con Air' that genuinely elevates it above most of the action competition (puns definitely intended) are the interactions between Cusack's US Marshal Vince Larkin and Colm Meaney's DEA Agent Duncan Malloy. Whereas most movies would be comfortable with the idea that these convicts are an evil blight on society, Larkin makes constant references to the idea that they've been, to some extent, institutionalised by the prison system. Malloy angrily disagrees and often calls the prisoners "animals", but he is consistently shown as pig-headed and governed by reactionary anger rather than thought (see the sequence in which Cusack tries and fails to convince him that he's chasing the wrong plane). Conversely Larkin is shown as intelligent and rational. Perhaps their relationship is best defined by the following exchange:

Vince Larkin: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by observing its prisoners." Dostevsky said that... after doin' a little time.
Duncan Malloy: "Fuck you!" Cyrus Grissom said that after putting a bullet in my agent's head, okay?

Malloy is motivated by revenge which is opposite of justice. This philosophical feud is complicated by the scene in which Malloy wants to shoot the plane down over the desert, only for Larkin to ensure that he doesn't - directly leading to the crash landing in Las Vegas, potentially killing hundreds of people in a densely populated area. Is Malloy's pragmatism vindicated here? Maybe that's a valid way of seeing it, though it's probably not the view taken by the film: after all, we want Cage to survive to see his wife and daughter to the strains of "How Can I Live".

FilmQuest 2012 (7/30): 'The Rock':

"What is wrong with these people, huh? Mason? Don't you think there's a lot of, uh, a lot of anger flowing around this island? Kind of a pubescent volatility? Don't you think? A lotta angst, a lot of "I'm sixteen, I'm angry at my father" syndrome? I mean grow up! We're stuck on an island with a bunch of violence-for-pleasure-seeking psychopathic marines, SHAME-ON-THEM!"

I was surprised to hear the above rant voiced by the hero of a 1996 Michael Bay action movie. Welcome to 'The Rock' - the latest entry for "FilmQuest 2012" - where it is spoken (or shouted) by Nicolas Cage's FBI chemical weapons specialist Stanley Goodspeed. It seems to be criticising the violent machismo of every Bay movie (even the ones that hadn't been made yet). And it's not an isolated case: elsewhere Sean Connery's ace escape artist and former SAS operative Captain Mason cites Oscar Wilde in declaring patriotism "the virtue of the vicious".

Both quotes seemingly run in direct opposition to much of what we see throughout Bay's movie, which fetishises American military men, might is right pragmatism and the star spangled banner as much as ever. There are sombre speeches about the importance of respecting the armed forces and about the honour involved in "serving", just like all of Bay's other glossy feature length army recruitment videos (and with the same frenetic cutting). 'The Rock' is in many ways the definitive "get the President on the phone" movie: full of ultra-macho one-liners, strangely charming vulgarities and fist-pumping moments of explosive violence. It's a film in which, without irony, people say things like:

• "Your best? Losers always go on about doing their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen."
• "This is the toughest call I've ever had to make... airstike approved!"
• "This man knows our most intimate secrets from the last half-century: the alien landing at Roswell, the truth about the JFK assassination. Mason's angry, he's lethal, he's a trained killer... and HE is the only hope that we have got!"
• "General, we've shed the same blood in the same mud - you know god damn well I can't give that order!"
• "Make no mistake, gentlemen. We are in the fight of our lives against maybe the greatest battalion commander of the Vietnam war, I shit you not!"
• "The whole world is being Fed-exed to hell in a handcart!"
• "You're between the rock and a hard case."

Anyone who's seen it will know there are a million more zingers like those, most punctuated by the cocking of a gun or the twang of an electric guitar. 'The Rock' invented hi-octane... then shot it into space on the back of a radioactive unicorn on crack where it exploded with the heat of a billion suns. You get the point: it's a film that waves its big dick in your face to the sound of the American national anthem. It's a film so over the top that it sometimes feels less like Bay's 'Armageddon' and more like Wes Anderson's MTV Awards parody of 'Armageddon'. Yet remember those two quotes from before? They feel like they're from a different movie universe.

Perhaps it's not surprising that 'The Rock' should exhibit signs of multiple personality disorder: it is the fruit of at least eight different writers - most of whom are uncredited for reasons only those within the nebulous and highly litigious world of Hollywood writing credits could explain. Among the uncredited are voices as disparate and distinctive as Aaron Sorkin and Quentin Tarantino (highly speculative, but perhaps some of that liberal-minded critique came from Sorkin).

But wherever the lines came from and however much they contradict each other (undermining whatever the point of 'The Rock' is in the process) there is little sense in denying that it's in the same bracket as 'Casablanca', 'Withnail & I' or 'The Big Lebowski' in terms of how endlessly quotable it is. Personally I love all the lines which lay out the stakes in really direct fashion, such as this doozy: "Look, I'm just a biochemist. Most of the time, I work in a little glass jar and lead a very uneventful life. I drive a Volvo, a beige one. But what I'm dealing with here is one of the most deadly substances the earth has ever known, so what say you cut me some FRIGGIN' SLACK?" What more do we need to know about the disparity between the life of Cage's character and the gravity of the situation he finds himself in? 'The Rock' is the sworn enemy of subtlety and I wouldn't have it any other way.

After foiling Ed Harris' apparently noble terrorist plot (it's easy to forget that pre-9/11 a lot of movie terrorism was domestic), Cage ends up in possession of the MacGuffin microfilm, holding information that got Connery's character locked up in Alcatraz for life without trial. Goodspeed's never previously expressed any interest in possessing this information, so why does his attainment of it count as a win? The answer: it just does. Especially because it facilitates one of the best (and most irreverent) final lines ever: "Honey, you wanna know who really killed JFK?"

Beames on Film is one year old!

Yesterday was the first birthday of this film blog, which I began a year and one day ago in order to have somewhere other than Facebook to shout my opinions at people over the internet. I just wanted to post a quick "thank you" to everyone who has read - or better still reads - my ramblings on cinema and hope that you stick with me over the next year, which I hope will include even more reviews and several visits to film festivals.

Here is some self-congratulatory stuff about how it's all been going.

2010 was quite eventful for me and saw me interview some big name Hollywood types (including Ricky Gervais, Darren Aronofsky and Oliver Stone) and write well over one hundred reviews, as well as lots of other stuff here and there - including one piece for the Sunday Telegraph. I have also become a regular contributor on one of the UK's best read daily film blogs Obsessed with Film and even once appeared as an "expert" on BBC Radio Sussex.

I did a lot more stuff than I ever expect to do in that first twelve months, but I can't yet rest on my laurels and I need to work to ensure that 2011 will be as big if not bigger for me (and by extension this blog). In mid-February I will be writing from the Berlin Film Festival, whilst I also hope to visit many others including a second trip to Venice later in the year (who knows, maybe even Cannes).

It's been fun, but also a lot of hard work - most of it (99.9% of it) unpaid. Thanks for supporting and encouraging me on my ramshackle journey to become a full-time film journalist. There aren't many comments left on the site, but Google Analytics ensures me you're out there. So sincerely: thank you. This coming year could prove make or break, so fingers crossed. I hope you are all still reading come January 2012!

To "sex up" this post a little with something tangentially relevant, here is my favourite scene about writing from one of my all-time favourite movies:

The worst films of the 2000s...

Soon after compiling a list of my favourite films of the last ten years I was asked what my least favourite films might be from the same period. As you might suspect it has been fairly easy to bring together a “bottom 10” list for the last decade. Within minutes of setting myself the task I had produced a list of some 30 films which stuck in my mind as being terrible.

Like most people, I tend to avoid seeing critically savaged films as a rule. So the universally slated likes of ‘Norbit’, ‘Epic Movie’ and ‘Catwoman’ have escaped being named here. It is definitely the case that there will be many worse films than I have selected here, certainly on a technical level, but these are the ones I hated most. None of the following (with the possible exception of one film) are even “funny bad”. Instead they are irredeemably empty, soulless, waste-of-time experiences.

On the list are a few films that maybe I am disproportionately bitter against because they let me down so badly, with two Disney animations, a Studio Ghibli film and a Coen Brother’s movie included here:

10) Jurassic Park III
Joe Johnston/USA/2001
I was such a huge fan of the first two ‘Jurassic Park’ films (especially as a dinosaur obsessed kid) that the inevitable poor quality of this non-Spielberg directed instalment was a crushing blow (I vividly remember how excited I was when the teaser poster was released). I occasionally watch this film back and for the first quarter of an hour I think “it’s not as bad as I remember.” ‘Sideways’ scribe Alexander Payne wrote a treatment of the screenplay and William H. Macy seemed a sound addition to the cast. However this optimism and goodwill all but evaporates when they set foot back on the island. Soon the Spinosaurus turns up and everyone starts talking to Raptors using bits of pipe. The effects are worse than those in the original, made almost a decade prior, and mumbo-jumbo, pseudoscience is far less convincing than the likes of “T-rex can’t see you if you don’t move!” I, foolishly, still long for a fourth film. But I just can’t take another one like this…



9) A Walk to Remember
Adam Shankman/USA/2002
Ok. This one is at least “funny bad”. A “bad boy” is sentenced to join a drama class to make amends for his bad behaviour. Whilst there he is tutored by a reverend’s daughter. “Promise me you won’t fall in love with me!” she says. One thing leads to another, blah blah blah, and the mismatched pair fall in love. However all is not well as the film reveals in a hilarious twist near the end. This one is not unpleasant to watch, I’ll give it that. On a serious note though, the most contrived, cliché rubbish you’ve ever seen.



8) Home on the Range
Will Finn & John Sanford/USA/2004
The film that finally sunk Disney’s hand-drawn animation department (after years of diminishing success), ‘Home on the Range’ is just so unappealing. Roseanne Barr voiced an anthropomorphic cow in the Wild West, who tries to save a little old ladies farm from being purchased by the local business tycoon. Thankfully Disney are now back on track with ‘The Princess and the Frog’, but thanks to this film we had to endure years of uninspired, sub-Pixar in-house CG films like ‘Chicken Little’, ‘Meet the Robinsons’ and ‘The Wild’ (see below).



7) Tales of Earthsea
Goro Miyazaki/Japan/2006
Between the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata Studio Ghibli never put a foot wrong . ‘The Cat Returns’ wasn’t great, but that was a made-for-TV feature Ghibli used to give experience to the next generation of animation talent. However, in 2006 Hayao Miyazaki’s son, Goro, adapted Ursula K. Le Guin’s fantasy Earthsea novels as ‘Tales of Earthsea’. The result caused a very public father and son rift, with Miyazaki senior very unhappy with his son’s efforts. The film was still a huge box-office hit in Japan, but the animation is notably limited (in the sense of re-used cells and scenes of little movement from characters) compared to every other film from the studio. It is also pretty dull and lacks (at the risk of seeming cheesy) the magic or the heart usually associated with the previous output.




6) Intolerable Cruelty
Joel Coen/USA/2003
As a fan, it pains me greatly to put a Coen Brother’s film on this list, but here it is. Made as a favour to the star and producer, George Clooney, the Coen’s did a re-write on a troubled screenplay, attempting to infuse it with their trademark style and humour. Some scenes feel like authentic Coen Brother’s moments, but these are still depressing as they remind you how good the Coen’s can be and make you ponder why you are watching such a broad, vacuous and dumbed-down romantic comedy.



5) Fermat’s Room
Luis Piedrahita & Rodrigo Sopeña/Spain/2007
The worst film I have ever seen at the Duke of York’s, ‘Fermat’s Room’ has a promising enough premise: a group of mathematicians have to work together to solves puzzles or else they will be crushed to death by the walls of the room. However, you quickly discover that there won’t be any clever problem solving here with characters instead falling upon the correct answers with all the sophistication of the ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Worst of all I couldn’t escape the feeling that the production values made it look like an ITV3 drama rather than a movie. ‘Fermat’s Room’ was only shown outside of Spain because of its high-concept. Other than that it is of no merit.



4) Tropic Thunder
Ben Stiller/USA/2008
Not one solitary laugh in this really long, high-concept comedy which rips off the 1986 gem ‘Three Amigos!’ without even having the common courtesy to cry “remake”. The targets are broad and still all the gags misfire. The thing that really makes this film criminally bad is that the people involved and the concept could and should have been funny. For example, the faux-action movie sequences could have been funny but instead of playing it straight the film goes for all-out comedy and ends up having no atmosphere. Also, any filmmaker that thinks a man in a fat suit singing and dancing badly constitutes comedy gold should have their human rights indefinitely suspended.



3) Knowing
Alex Proyas/USA/2009
The worst in a long line of appalling Nicolas Cage vehicles in that last ten years, ‘Knowing’ is shameful in its use of real life disasters (such as 9/11) for a high-concept, thriller plotline that involves the discovery that these events were pre-determined. The film then lurches from plane crash, to subway derailment in a horrible medley of voyeuristic disaster-pornography. A big fake snuff film with delusions of grandeur, as the cod existential themes discussed fail to lend the film any weight whatsoever. It is also horrifically cringe-inducing as it involves Cage (a scientist) regaining his lost faith in god, whilst the climax (SPOILER) sees his child rescued by aliens (that look like angels) and taken to a garden of Eden to restart the Earth which is destroyed by a bastard god.



2) The Wild
Steve "Spaz" Williams/Canada-USA/2006
The second Disney film on this list (in a decade that started so well with ‘Lilo & Stitch’), ‘The Wild’ is the only film in history that I have wanted to walk out of at the cinema. This film came out the same year as Dreamworks ‘Madagascar’ and boasts basically an identical plot (a mad-cap gang of animals break out of a New York zoo and end up in Africa). But unlike previous similar Disney vs Dreamworks pairings like ‘A Bug’s Life’/‘Antz’ and ‘Finding Nemo’/‘Shark Tale’, this one is actually far worse than its doppelganger. Dull-looking, unfunny and slowly-paced, ‘The Wild’ is the worst Disney animation ever made (a fact reflected in its lacklustre box-office).



1) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Michael Bay/USA/2009
Aside from the fact that I found the film to be more than a little racist (have you seen the Autobot Twins?!) and sexist there is also the fact that this movie is just very poorly made on a basic fundamental level. The narrative is incoherent. The fast-cutting nature of Bay’s music video-style direction is disorientating and the film is also overlong, running at 150 minutes! The lead actors have zero charisma and the spectacle of seeing huge CGI robots punching each other quickly wears off. Add to that all the misplaced sex humour in this ‘12A’ certificate movie and a dizzying number of “comedy” sub-plots. I hated the first one, but this easily managed to top it. Forget worst film of the decade, ‘Transformers 2’ is easily my least favourite film ever made.




As with the “best films” list, here are 15 more bad films from the last decade that didn't quite make the cut:
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Hancock (2008)
Kill Bill: Part Two (2004)
Inland Empire (2006)
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2007)
King Kong (2005)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Gangs of New York (2000)
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)
Superman Returns (2006)
Men in Black (2002)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
The Ladykillers (2004)

IQGamer's David Bierton turns his attention to Kick-Ass...

My good friend Dave Bierton has kindly offered his impressions of 'Kick-Ass' which I reviewed last month on this blog. Dave is generally a video games journalist and has left his comfort zone to contribute this interesting and comprehensive review, which provides a second opinion to my own:

"I went into seeing ‘Kick-Ass’ not knowing what to expect, and left particularly impressed after witnessing what can only be described as an alternative take on the superhero movie. In fact the film isn’t actually a superhero movie at all. Instead it takes inspiration from a number of sources from ‘The Dark Knight’, ‘Kill Bill’, ‘Superbad’, even ‘The Matrix’ and just briefly, Sergio Leone’s Dollars series. The result is a fresh look at what it is like for an ordinary man to become a so-called superhero, with no powers, no cool weapons, just a sheer determination to make a difference, and a lot of luck and chaos which comes his way.

The main reason for me why I enjoyed the film so much, and also why in my opinion it works so well, is down to the mixture of styles and characters, along with the superbly choreographed action sequences, which all balance out and give a grounding to the film’s somewhat ridiculous premise. A kid in high school is as unlikely to become a fighting avenger as much as a multi million-dollar tycoon is to become Batman in real life. However, seeing such a social misfit, a loser lost in the land of the ordinary, as people go, make this almost comedic attempt at vigilantism makes for an entertaining caper in which we all can relate to.

‘Kick-Ass’ as a character provides much of the films comic relief. He can barely stand up the most meagre of street thugs, let alone against a crew of experienced Mafia-style heavies. However he takes on the challenge with all the determination in the world, naivety intact, without really thinking anything through beforehand. It provides the film with some of its funniest scenes, but also its message that there are some serious consequences when taking things into your own hands. Violence always comes at a price, and the question is: is that price one worth paying?

The real star of the show, however, is Chloe Moretz as the pint-sized Hot Girl. The sight of seeing a small thirteen year old girl slicing and dicing her way through a room of hoodlums was particularly amusing, and somewhat shocking at times. Her brutality is only matched by her resolve, never flinching and seemingly enjoying her sadistic antics. Her role, like with Nicholas Cage’s Big Daddy, is played straight, without the intention of comedic effect outside of her outlandish actions. Though hearing her shouting out the ‘c word’ before ripping through her adversaries was a particular highlight, and one of the films most amusing moments. The whole scene felt like some homage to the typical Japanese Anime, with the eclectic score and Moretz’s portrayal of an almost perverse form of innocents and naivety.

I found ‘Kick-Ass’ to be a polished mixture of high-kicking comic book fantasy, combined with the stark realities showcased in ‘The Dark Knight’, along various nods at other superhero and action movies of the last decade or so. It’s all delivered in a reserved, almost understated manner, making some of its more ridiculous characters not only believable, but also integral to making the whole thing work. The combination of comedic elements in the dialogue and action, with serious delivery by Moretz, Cage, and Mark Strong as the villain of the piece, take Kick-Ass from being just another ‘different’ attempt at making a comic book movie into something else entirely. Something much better if you ask me, and one of the most enjoyable films I have seen in a long time.

With regards to a sequel potentially being made at some point -the end of the film sets itself up for one –maybe they shouldn’t really go down that route, especially seeing how the characters progress and develop, the dynamics between them, and the grounded reality of this film. As it stands Kick-Ass works so well as it is, I’d rather not have a cleaver attempt to make the film become a franchise, losing its uniqueness and the things which made it work so well in the first place.

I’d have to say that everyone should at least attempt to see the film at some point, preferably with all the impact that comes with seeing it on the big screen, surround sound and wide viewing angle and all. I’ll be doing just that on Monday at the Dukes, along with my other work cohorts, which should make for a very entertaining evening."

Thanks again to Dave, whose video game analysis can be read on his own blog: IQGamer. We both seem to agree that it is a film well worth watching, so check it out! A conversation about the film between Splendor Cinema's Jon Barrenechea and myself can be heard in our latest podcast, whilst I have also previously written about attending the film's London Premiere.

'Kick-Ass' is still playing regularly at the Duke of York's Picturehouse cinema in Brighton and is rated '15' by the BBFC.

'Kick-Ass' review: Does exactly what it says on the poster

As I mentioned yesterday, I was lucky enough to attend the UK premiere of Matthew Vaughn’s ‘Kick-Ass’ on Monday night and I had a really great time. Some of this was down to the atmosphere of being part of a big and enthusiastic audience watching a yet-to-be-released film with its stars (and on a massive screen to boot), but most of it was down to the fact that ‘Kick-Ass’ is a brilliantly entertaining film. Probably the most entertaining film I have seen so far this year.

I have not read the Mark Millar comic book on which the film is based, so I couldn’t possibly comment on whether the film remains true to its source material, but I can say that this film is a damn sight better than the last film I saw based on one of his books. ‘Wanted’, which starred James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie as a couple of arsehole assassins, was a truly hateful movie and has some parallels with ‘Kick-Ass’ in that both are ultra-violent and depict a world in which violence is morally fine, so long as the people you are killing are deemed “bad”. Both also have a central character who is basically a weedy outsider (McAvoy in ‘Wanted’ and Aaron Johnson as the title character in ‘Kick-Ass’), but whereas ‘Wanted’ seems to preach that physical weakness is contemptible and has its hero using violence as a way to put himself above others in society (by the end of the film he is superior to his old workmates), ‘Kick-Ass’ is less troubling, as its central nerds are celebrated by the film. In fact in ‘Kick-Ass' the title character is more often the one whose ass is being kicked and, whereas ‘Wanted’ seems to have a nihilistic hatefulness about it, ‘Kick-Ass’ celebrates its naive heroes who are basically determined to protect people and right percieved social wrongs.



Now, even though I found it a lot less distasteful than 'Wanted', there are all sorts of problems with ‘Kick-Ass’ from a political point of view (none of which are too dissimilar from last year’s horrid ‘Harry Brown’ which Vaughn produced). The film has an uncomplicated view of crime (bad people commit it) and an equally uncomplicated view about how to deal with crime (the mass murder of criminals), not to mention that the film’s hoodlums are pretty much all played by ethnic minorities and are of low social class. British actor, Mark Strong, plays his villain as a prototypical Italian mob-type, whilst Nicolas Cage (an Italian-American actor) plays his hero as an ethnically “white” everyman figure. But everything in ‘Kick-Ass’ plays out like a Warner Brothers cartoon (with ‘Kill Bill’ levels of violence and swearing) and is injected with a lot of humour. Whereas ‘Wanted’ is self-consciously “cool” (in a way aimed at pubescent boys, with leather jackets, guns and sexy women belonging to socially retarded geeks) and promotes a violent attitude towards society (not necessarily physical), ‘Kick-Ass’, with its geek heroes, is always more self-effacing - with one of the vigilante’s portrayed by McLovin’ from ‘Superbad’ (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) - and somehow ultimately better natured.

Now I’ve catered for my conscience I can get to writing about the things I really enjoyed about the movie, which was one of very few recent films in which I didn’t check my watch (it packs a lot of great stuff into just under two hours), as it held my attention throughout. For starters, whilst Mark Strong, Aaron Johnson and Christopher Mintz-Plasse are pretty good in their respective roles, Nicholas Cage and the thirteen year-old Chloë Moretz give brilliantly funny performances as the films two stand-out characters: the father and daughter pairing of ‘Big Daddy’ and ‘Hit-Girl’. Nicolas Cage displays suburb comic skills (previously seen in ‘Raising Arizona’ back in 1987 and, more recently in 2002’s ‘Adaptation’) whenever he’s onscreen, with his character (a softly-spoken, gentle father who turns his daughter into a violent, gun-obsessed killer) switching to an Adam West impression when adopting his ‘Big Daddy’ persona. This is not only a playful nod towards Batman of the 1960s, but also possibly a humorous take on Christian Bale’s much-derided change of voice when he dons the armour of the Dark Knight in Christopher Nolan’s films (whatever it is in homage to... it is hilarious).

The action sequences also remind me of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. Of course, they are formally more similar (as is the film's visual style and design) to Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’, but they remind me of ‘The Dark Knight’ because that film represents the last time I really enjoyed action sequences in a cinema. The set-pieces are played out like the very best Warner Brothers cartoons in that they are imaginative and funny in the way they choose to deal pain to all involved (the dispatching of a key villain literally caused me to burst into spontaneous applause). I don’t want to spoil any of the set-pieces themselves here, but they are really impressive and varied (unlike ‘Wanted’ or ‘The Matrix’ in which all the sequences blur into one burst of slow-motion, bullet-time gunfire). The champion of these set pieces is, unquestionably, Moretz’s ‘Hit-Girl’ who really does kick ass whenever she is onscreen (in a manner recalling a miniature version of ‘Kill Bill’s ‘Gogo’).



The Daily Mail will no doubt continue to hate ‘Kick-Ass’ for it’s bad language (the ‘c-word’ coming from the mouth of a thirteen year-old girl will do that) and over the top violence, even though the film’s politics aren’t altogether incompatible with that paper’s own. But putting those issues behind me, I have to admit that ‘Kick-Ass’ was terrifically good fun and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to go to the movies, sit back and get entertained. It is equal parts funny and exciting and (if it performs at the box-office) may provoke a new wave of independent movie blockbusters.

'Kick-Ass' opens on Friday nationwide and will be played at the Duke of York's in Brighton (where I work). It is (somehow) rated '15' by the BBFC (even though a little girl says 'cunt' and kills almost everyone onscreen in a tidal wave of bloody violence). Jon and I will podcast on it soon, so stay tuned for that.