DVD review: Kick-Ass

There seemed to be a certain amount of glee in Hollywood when Kick-Ass failed to take hold at the box-office earlier this year.

This upstart superhero flick, independently financed in the UK by Brit director Matthew Vaughn, was turned down by all the studios for being too provocative. So when it got made and released without their permission (and their edge-softening notes), it looked as if it might finally expose the system for the flabby beast that it is, especially since stylistically Kick-Ass looks better – and is certainly more entertaining – than dozens of blockbusters with four or five times its production budget (a relative snip at 20 million).

In the end, for whatever reason, it ended up a much more modest hit than some of the pre-release hype suggested it would be and Hollywood went on as normal, even co-opting Vaughn to direct the new X-Men movie.

The film itself, however, remains one of the more robust mainstream films of the year, and a fresh and anarchic addition to superhero genre weighed down with ponderous franchise movies. Based on the 2008 graphic novel by Glasgow-born writer Mark Millar and New York artist John Romita Jr, it simultaneously mocks the darker/grittier™ take on superheroes demanded by fanboys while delivering the kind of violent, intensely thrilling action most of these films bottle out of showing.

It also offers up a slew of new, audaciously imagined characters, chief among them Hit Girl (Chlo Moretz), the blue-haired, pre-teen assassin whose use of the c-word – and ability to wield a sword like a samurai and dispense gunfire like Chow Yun Fat in Hard Boiled – seemed to enrage at least half the commentators on the film when it came out. On his hungover commentary track (he recorded it the day after the premiere), Vaughn expresses his continued exasperation at some of the media outrage, but seems more bemused by it than anything else, viewing Hit Girl as more of a fun, Han Solo-style character than a tabloid-bating provocation.

She's certainly one of the more memorable and subversive movie creations of recent years and it's likely the film will find its natural audience on DVD and Blu-Ray where Nic Cage's inspired, outlandish turn as Hit Girl's demented father, Big Daddy, can be appreciated for the comic masterstroke it is.

A detailed making-of documentary also gives a decent insight into creating blockbuster scale on an indie budget.