"Borrowing" moods

It just took me forever to realize that the song used in one of the pivotal scenes of "Kick-Ass" made the scene it accompanied so evocative and strong because it came right out of a different scene in a different movie: Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later" (the song is called "In the House - In a Heartbeat" on the soundtrack for "28 Days Later). There was a strange disconnect there, for a moment, because what I was seeing was actually not quite that great, but the music, and the KNOWLEDGE that I'd heard this in a different, better context before, made it interesting. The film uses snippets of music previously used by Danny Boyle throughout.

"Shut the hell up and pick your weapon."

The movie itself isn't bad either. The first thing I heard about it was the mixture of horror and enthusiasm for the fact that a 13-year old girl causes more damage and uses fouler language than any other character in the movie, yet remains clearly pre-adolescent (unlike Natalie Portman's character in "Léon"). Somehow it's telling that the use of excessive violence isn't what leads to a red band trailer, but the fact that a girl says "cunts" before slicing up a group of criminals. Chloe Moretz, who played the insightful and delightfully intelligent little sister in "(500) Days of Summer", is pretty amazing and does overshadow everybody else. 

"With no power comes no responsibility, except that wasn't exactly true."

The director of the movie is British (Matthew Vaughn, long-time collaborator of Guy Ritchie), but the tone (it's based on a comic book by Mark Millar) resembles that of "Superbad", therefore lacking some of the depth Greg Mottola gained in the follow-up, "Adventureland", although apparently all vaguely geeky but not completely socially inapt male teenage leads must now look like Jesse Eisenberg. 

Nicolas Cage, however, probably gives the best performance in a long while. This might start "Wes Anderson gives Bill Murray a new purpose" like revamping of his career.