'Kick-Ass 2' review by Captain Raptor

'Kick-Ass 2' review by Captain Raptor

Kick-Ass is a film very close to my heart. The blend of ultra-violence and all-out comedy whilst never sacrificing intelligence was so spot-on that it stands shoulder to shoulder with The Dark Knight and Fight Club as one of my all time favourite films. But part of what made Kick-Ass so great was how unexpected it was - you wouldn't have predicted a film about a foul-mouth purple-costumed murderous tween girl fighting crime alongside Nicolas Cage pretending to be Adam West. Now that we know all its tricks, could round two be just as much of a knockout?

The opening training scene is a callback to one of the early scenes of the original, giving a vibe of 'more of the same', which I would definitely have been willing to see. However, having already established their characters, the sequel decides to focus a little more on emotion. Around twenty minutes into the movie, Hit-Girl (unanimously agreed upon to be the best thing about the film) decides to hang up her boots and cape and try to live the life of an ordinary teenage girl. While Chloë Grace Moretz nails the emotional scenes (as should be expected from somebody who seems incapable of giving a sub-par performance) as she is variably rejected and accepted by a high school clique, it's still not a particularly entertaining sub-plot, being neither as funny or dramatic as it could have been. On top of that, the absence of seriousness in the first film just made those one or two emotional gut-punches hit even harder, so spreading out any attempts to show character depth merely weakens it. Some truly awful stuff happens in the course of Kick-Ass 2, but it was nowhere near as upsetting or as dramatic as it might have been. Only the comedy is derailed by these proceedings, and I'm happy to say that the sequel's action is just as bloody and blackly funny - lawnmowers, shards of glass, 'gravity poles' and even sharks come into play, and there are still plenty of the shocking moments that induce a mixture of laughing and gasping that we saw last time around. 

As I mentioned previously, the comedy has also suffered. The over-the-top violence still has its amusing charm, but in the narrative scenes there's not much that's worthy of an audible laugh, let alone the hysterics that various parts of Kick-Ass would have you in. Aaron Taylor-Johnson's titular hero has already undergone his character transformation from 'Dorky wannabe' to 'Dorky badass, sort of', and he's no longer the wonderfully hopeless underdog, especially when teaming up with all the film's new heroes. The new additions to the cast are on-form, in particular wife-and-husband duo Remembering Tommy (one half of whom, Monica Dolan, I dismissed less than seven days ago as forgettable in my Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa review), a brilliantly out of place suburban middle class couple. Jim Carrey is better than I thought he would be at convincingly portraying a vigilante, (although he's still not quite as badass as the rest of the characters seem to think he is) and the ever-likeable Donald Faison charms his way through the underused role of Dr Gravity. Although my review does appear to be strongly negative, it's only because of the high standard set by the first film. All the criticisms I have with the film essentially come down to a few issues with the script and a failure to fully capture the unpredictable nature of the original. 

While Kick-Ass 2 fails to escape the shadow of its predecessor, it's still an enjoyable display, combining all the winning ingredients of Kick-Ass, just to a lesser effect. I guess that ultimately I was disappointed by the film, but an inferior version of Kick-Ass is still better than a lot of the competition. Moretz and Mintz-Plasse entertain about as much as they used to, the fight scenes are still phenomenal and the film was probably much, much better than this review gives it credit it for. Following up something as brilliant Kick-Ass is no easy task, and in this respect, they didn't really succeed, but as a film in its own right, Kick-Ass 2 is definitely worth your time.