BLOG Why I Love Hit Girl

US blogger Laura McConnell adores Kick-Ass in particular its sweary 11-year-old killer [WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS]

Before any of this summer’s expected blockbusters had a chance to steal the stage, I went to see the one film of the season that had me truly excited. The one movie that I simply had to see above all others.

Kick-Ass.

Now, I’m one of the unlucky ones who only got to see this film this weekend (instead of last month) due to the US release date being nearly a month after some international ones, but I survived the wait - and it was worth it.

Kick-Ass, quite simply, rocked.

I loved everything about this movie.

I loved Nicolas Cage’s old-style Batman performance of Big Daddy. I loved the underemphasized lead role, played with just the right combination of dork and dude by Aaron Johnson. I loved the classic comic book origin stories of both Big Daddy and Red Mist. I loved the fight choreography and the stunts. I loved that Big Daddy died, because anything less would have sacrificed the story. I loved the blood and gore and foul language in this film for the same reason. I loved Kick-Ass’ geeky best friends and his ride in the car with Red Mist. I loved that he screwed up big time more than once. Oh, and I loved the little joke about The Spirit 3 on the banners above the cinema in the movie, too.

But most of all, I loved Hit Girl.

I know, I know. Everyone loves Hit Girl.

But who can blame them?

The juxtaposition of “cute little girl” and “terrifying assassin with a potty mouth and a really big gun” is just too awesome not to love.

But for me it’s more than that. Hit Girl could have easily been a caricature, but she was not. She was grounded with just enough reality to make that impossible. Hit Girl’s fight scenes were exquisitely brutal but relatively believable. Sure, Kick-Ass is a comic book movie, and therefore it’s going to have some ridiculous things going on, but while Hit Girl’s kills had to be wild enough to make her awesome, they were not so insane as to take me out of the movie and make me shake my head at the ridiculousness of them, like many fight scenes in, oh, say some James Bond films. They were still at least physically possible. None of this jumping on planes like in the latest Die Hard incarnation.

And the final battle, when Hit Girl got her butt kicked by a grown man? Bravo! I loved this for two big reasons. One, that the grown man actually fought her and won when the playing field was otherwise levelled by way of Hit Girl being unarmed; and two, that Hit Girl neither gave up like a whiny little brat nor became some sort of super-powered mutant with the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound or cripple grown men with her bare hands. She fought hard with what she had, but in the end it wasn’t enough and the little girl in her cried a bit. That’s how it would go down. It was actually as realistic as a comic book climatic fight scene can be. This fight was reality-bending, but within the laws of our universe as we know it.

I truly appreciated this. I also adored that Hit Girl was scared when she was out of ammo and cornered, like anyone would be. I loved that she was sad when her dad died but still able to pull herself together and get things done, as we all must do. I just can’t say enough about the brilliance of this character, and young Chloe Moretz’s performance was amazing.

If I were in a position to give this film a star rating, I think it might go like this:

“My God, it’s full of stars!”

Five so wouldn’t cover it. But since that is the standard convention, I’ll agree with Jordan Farley and go along with SFX’s rating of five. Take a look at Jordan’s review here for even more reasons to love this film. Then go see it. In my humble opinion, if you like super hero movies at all and can handle a fair bit (ok, a lot) of blood and violence, it’s worth it.

I was worried that Kick-Ass wouldn’t live up to the hype, and a while back, in a post somewhere on this site, I commented that I wasn’t sure if I was scared of this movie or a little in love with it.

Well, now I know.

In love. All the way. Head over heels.