Premium Rush (2012)

Posted on January 28, 2014 by badblokebob

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a Manhattan bicycle courier in this near-real-time action-thriller from co-writer/director David Koepp. Charged with getting a letter from one end of Manhattan to the other through rush hour traffic ASAP, Gordon-Levitt finds himself coming up against a loony cop (Michael Shannon) who for some reason is desperate to get his hands on said envelope…

The emphasis is firmly on “action” during the film’s brisk hour-and-a-half running time, the plot primarily an excuse for bike-related chases and stunts. And that’s fine by me. You don’t need to be a cycling nut to enjoy what’s on display here, much as you don’t need to be a petrolhead or NRA member to enjoy regular action movie theatrics. There aren’t many (or any?) action flicks based around pushbikes, so the whole thing comes across as pretty original. Mix that with invigorated direction, especially in the editing and graphics (think Sherlock), but which doesn’t sink to en vogue handheld action choppiness, and you have a movie that feels both classical (many reviews note a sense of early-’00s-ness) and almost innovative, a winning combination that feels fresh.

Although the bike chases and tricks are the star of the film, the story is uncommonly structured through an array of flashbacks, gradually unveiling everyone’s motivations in a series of overlapping perspectives that reveal why the little envelope is so important. It still feels like someone came up with the bike-action concept and then worked out a plot that would facilitate it, but piecing together the mystery adds another level of entertainment. There’s also some romance guff that could’ve been cut without hurting anything, but Koepp wisely keeps it to a couple of fast scenes and lines so it never intrudes too heavily.

Gordon-Levitt makes for as appealing a lead as ever, not that his charm is called on much, while Shannon is a memorably crazed villain. He’s a better fit here than he was as Man of Steel’s General Zod, but he’s a delectable nemesis in any context. It’s true that his barminess serves to stretch the concept’s real-world plausibility, but so does a thin bit halfway through that struggles to drive the scenario on to feature length, not to mention a boatload of Chinese gangster stuff. But hey, this is an action-thriller — if you want real-world plausibility, you’re in the wrong genre.

Basing an action movie around bicycles is a pleasant twist on the familiar, making Premium Rush a serviceably entertaining hour-and-a-half for those who like straightforward thrills and well-made chase sequences.

Macbeth (1948)

Posted on January 23, 2014 by badblokebob

2013 #79
Orson Welles | 103 mins | TV | 4:3 | USA / English | PG

Twelve years on from his innovative, acclaimed, career-bolstering ‘Voodoo Macbeth’, and with the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast and films like Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and The Lady from Shanghai now under his belt, Orson Welles tried to interest Hollywood in something they’d only attempted a handful of times since the advent of talkies: a Shakespeare adaptation.

“Tried to interest” and “attempted” are not inapt phrases here. After failing to elicit interest in an adaptation of Othello, Welles switched to pitching the ever-popular Macbeth as “a perfect cross between Wuthering Heights and Bride of Frankenstein,” interesting Republic Pictures because of their desire to move from producing low-budget Westerns to being a prestige studio. The end result was Welles had to shoot his film in just 23 days for only $700,000. The end result was a movie that struggled against Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, released the same year, and for which poor critical reception led to nearly 20 minutes of cuts and the remainder being dubbed to change the actors’ accents.

Restored in 1980, the original version is a compromised but interesting adaptation. Welles has chopped and changed the play, cutting scenes, transposing others, assigning speeches to different characters, even creating new ones. This array of modifications scandalised critics at the time, though nowadays it’s much more common for film (and stage) versions of Shakespeare to mess around with the text as needed, usually to make the works a manageable length. Macbeth is one of the more sensibly-sized plays, however, though I suppose this is the legacy of Welles’ 23-day schedule.

The low budget and quick schedule affect the film across the board, for good and ill. There’s much dramatic staging, with grand sets and doom-laden lighting. The shadow-drenched cinematography may well be a result of the cheap production, but the resulting effect is marvellous. Indeed, all the camerawork is great. There are some striking long takes, including the majority of the night of the murder occurring in one long unbroken shot. The costumes, on the other hand, look like a ragtag bunch of Past Clothing from the studio’s store… which is because they essentially were.

Welles chose to have the cast speak with Scottish accents, which unfortunately end up a bit squiffy. I suppose it’s an attempt at authenticity at least, and if you don’t allow them to bother you then they won’t bother you. I certainly wound up not noticing them after only a few minutes. In spite of that, many of the performances are quite strong. Of their era — they can be a little stagey and histrionic, lacking the subtlety we might expect today — but good. The dialogue was pre-recorded for the sake of the schedule, with the actors miming their lines on set. Seems like a ridiculous idea, and no doubt had an effect on performances, but I only noticed it once in the entire production.

Much of the score (by Jacques Ibert, after Welles failed to secure Bernard Herrmann for contractual reasons) is appropriately atmospheric, but at one point it goes all Comedy. Macbeth himself is hardly in possession of all his faculties at that point, acting like a drunkard; but rather than make the sequence appropriately sinister (it’s in this state that he orders the execution of Banquo and Fleance, for example), it plays up the silliness, which is a shame.

For a variety of reasons, stemming from both the production situation and Welles’ creative choices, this is a flawed film. That said, its successes outweigh its problems to create a memorable adaptation that is justly regarded as one of the more significant films in Welles’ oeuvre.

Tom Conway as the Falcon, Part II

Posted on January 20, 2014 by badblokebob

Back in September 2012 (my word, was it really so long ago?!), I started posting reviews of RKO’s series of films starring the Falcon, a sort of gentlemen detective character that the studio had licensed as a cheaper replacement for The Saint.

The first three instalments were headlined by the then star of the Saint films, “Russian-born English film and television actor, singer-songwriter, music composer, and author” (and, later, voice of Shere Khan in Disney’s Jungle Book), George Sanders. You can read my thoughts on his Falcon films here.

When Sanders decided he wanted to step down from the series, RKO decided to replace the Falcon character with his brother, who fortunately adopted the same avian moniker. Who better to play Sanders’ screen brother than his real-life sibling, Tom Conway? After the brothers shared the screen for Conway’s debut appearance, the latter went on to lead nine further Falcon films. My opinion of his first few can be read here.

This is the first of two review compendiums that will complete my coverage of the series.

The Falcon in Hollywood (1944)

Posted on January 20, 2014 by badblokebob

After leaving his New York base to investigate some co-eds, travel out west, and visit Mexico, the Falcon takes a well-earned vacation to the moviemaking capital of the world, Hollywood. But naturally trouble finds him there too, in the shape of a villain he once put away, his girl, a mistaken handbag, a cocky cab driver, a troubled film production, and — of course — murder.

By this point you should know what you’re in for with a Falcon film: a solid murder mystery plot with some light fun and mischief on the way to its solution. In this one, the plot is actually quite simple to follow for quite a while, making a change from recent Falcons. It’s still an engrossing enough mystery, but clearly told. But then someone throws a bunch of extra suspects and machinations into the mix and you’re left to fend for yourself, as ever.

Highlights here include a sassy sidekick taxi-driver played by Veda Ann Borg, who makes for playful comic relief alongside star Tom Conway. Though an array of the girls here are repeat performers (and as we’ll see most of them again, I’ll get into that then), Borg isn’t one of them, which is a distinct shame. Another memorable guest star is John Abbott as the movie’s producer, who quotes Shakespeare at the slightest provocation — even when he’s alone.

Stand-out sequences include a bit where the police detectives move through a crowd of suspects, all relaxing near the pool on a location shoot, while outlining each one’s possible motivations, essentially to their face. It’s a simple sequence, not exactly high on drama or humour, but there’s a pleasant structural touch to it. Or the finale: the Falcon is, as ever, drawn into the case by a mysterious woman… but by the end he has four of them grouped around him!

With the series’ usual mix of mystery and humour firing on all cylinders, coupled with what I suppose you’d call an insider’s take on the movie business adding some additional charm, in Hollywood is certainly amongst the Falcon’s better outings.

* As with the vast majority of the Falcon series, The Falcon in Hollywood hasn’t been passed by the BBFC since its original release. Nonetheless, it’s available on DVD, rated PG. ^

The Falcon in Mexico (1944)

Posted on January 20, 2014 by badblokebob

“In our peaceful country, life is very seldom in danger,” states one character halfway through The Falcon in Mexico, just one of many instances that might make you think the film was co-funded by the Mexican tourist board. Oh sure, there’s the usual array of thefts and murders that you’d expect from a Falcon adventure, but they’re mostly committed by Americans. No, the film on the whole is very keen on the place, and the quality of its police, and even ends with a shot of a poster proclaiming “Visit Mexico!”

That’s something the production team didn’t do, incidentally, recreating it via some surprisingly good rear-projection (a few times I actually wondered if they had gone for a jolly after all) and intercut documentary footage (rumoured to have been shot for Orson Welles’ unfinished documentary about Brazil, which sort of became It’s All True).

As for the story, it’s one of the more convoluted plots the series has come up with, all to do with apparently-new paintings by a supposedly-dead artist. I confess I actually found it a little hard to keep track of, especially once it all starts getting explained in hefty scenes of speedy exposition towards the end. What I did make out was grandly far-fetched — more so than normal, I mean. Considering the tone and style of the series, it’s kind of OK that most of the plot’s explanations are not even close to plausible in the real world. On the bright side, it does make for another genuine mystery (I should stop praising the series for this now, all the films do it).

It all adds up to another entertaining outing for the Falcon, with a pleasantly different international flavour.

* As with the vast majority of the Falcon series, The Falcon in Mexico hasn’t been passed by the BBFC since its original release. Nonetheless, it’s available on DVD, rated PG. ^

The Falcon Out West (1944)

Posted on January 20, 2014 by badblokebob

With each passing entry, the Falcon films become less reminiscent of their Saint forebears and more akin to the Poirots and Marples of this world: a gently comical murder mystery, with a finite location and a finite number of suspects, where the ‘game’ of solving the plot is the point.

This instalment sees the Falcon more removed from his original New York environs than ever before, as he heads out to The West to solve a murder committed in NY. While that might sound illogical, the plot just about swings it, and provides all the Western action it can muster: runaway coaches, shootin’, horseback riding, gentle racism about Native Americans… This is the West of the 1940s, theoretically 50 years or whatever on from The Wild West, but conceptually almost unchanged. Whether that was true in reality I’ve no idea, but it makes for a more entertaining film.

That said, this isn’t quite up to the high bar set by the exemplary preceding film, but it had its moments. Most importantly, it’s another good mystery for the series — hence my Christie comparison. I genuinely didn’t guess who the murderer was; in fact, my suspect was someone else entirely, and there were numerous other red herrings along the way too. A definite success in that department.

Out West isn’t my favourite Falcon film, then, but it is still among the series’ best efforts.

* As with the vast majority of the Falcon series, The Falcon Out West hasn’t been passed by the BBFC since its original release, when it was cut. Nonetheless, it’s available on DVD, rated PG. Naturally I have no idea if it’s uncut, or if that even really matters. ^

The Falcon and the Co-eds (1943)

Posted on January 20, 2014 by badblokebob

In American colloquial language, “coed” or “co-ed” is used to refer to a mixed school… As a noun, the word “coed” is used to refer to a female student in a mixed gender school.

I Wikipedia’d that just to check, because in his fourth outing as the Falcon, Tom Conway investigates a mystery at an all-girls school.

Minor oddnesses aside, The Falcon and the Co-eds is one of the series’ better entries. I suppose these days the plot would only sustain a TV murder mystery rather than a theatrical release, but it’s a solid whodunnit — not something these Saint and Falcon films can always claim. Here, the students of a remote girls’ school are suspicious that the death of a teacher wasn’t sudden heart failure as the faculty claim, and one who previously had a dalliance with our titular hero calls on him to investigate. Mystery and intrigue ensue, with a plot that thickens and an array of potential suspects.

Alongside this is the series’ trademark humour. Here it’s served by both the college girls’ infatuation with our suave English hero, and a trio of younger lasses who are part Greek chorus and part sidekick team. The series’ regular comic relief, Inspector Donovan and Detective Bates, are on hand too, thankfully without their grating catchphrase. It’s not all light, though: the film was cut on its original UK release, presumably for the things noted in its 2012 classification: “references to suicide and a drugs overdose”.

In fact, the worst thing about the film is purely a result of its age, and that’s the occasional bout of misogyny. Let’s face it, the girls going all giggly over the Falcon is pretty defensible (look at modern-day reactions to the likes of One Direction, Justin Bieber, or even Benedict Cumberbatch), but the bit where he picks a twenty-something girl up to smack her bottom is a bit much. Still, it opens with a great bit: the Falcon parks his car, a girl immediately runs up to it: “Mr Lawrence?” “Yes?” She jumps in, instantly kisses him full on the lips, and when she pulls away all he can say, with a slightly surprised look, is, “Nice!” You could put that in something today and it’d still work.

The Falcon’s high point to date was surely the previous film, The Falcon in Danger, which was also directed by Clemens and featured two of the same leading ladies — I guess RKO didn’t think anyone would notice, even when the films were released just a few months apart. Co-eds perhaps doesn’t reach quite that level, though it makes a good fist of it. The twisty plot is engrossing and the humour entertaining, though I felt more could have been made of the potentially atmospheric remote cliff-top setting. It’s the kind of film where I began imagining how it might be remade to even greater effect. That may sound like a criticism but, when it comes to B-movies of this vintage, such thoughts always endear them to me.

I often find star ratings a bit useless on these long-running series. They all fall into roughly the same bracket in the grand scheme of movie-watching, but within the series there are distinct highs and lows. In Danger is the only one so far I’ve seen fit to give a whole 4 stars too, but Co-eds sits right behind it.

Man of Steel (2013)

Posted on January 17, 2014 by badblokebob

When Doctor Who returned in 2005, eager to find a new mainstream audience, can you imagine how well it would have gone down if it spent the first six or seven minutes on an alien world where old men with silly names wearing strange costumes argued about politics? Fastforward the best part of a decade and, buoyed no doubt by the various scales of success enjoyed by the likes of Avatar (strange alien world, silly names) and Game of Thrones (arguing about politics, silly names), that’s exactly how Superman reboot Man of Steel chooses to spend its opening 20 minutes. (In percentage terms, “6 or 7” is to Doctor Who’s brisk 45 minutes as “20” is to Man of Steel’s indulgent 143.)

Produced by Christopher Nolan and other creatives behind the uber-successful Batman reboot The Dark Knight Trilogy, this is intended to do a similar thing for Superman: a present-day, real-world relaunch. Which begins with a huge sequence on a crazy alien world. Well done, chaps. And that’s before we get into the merits of grounding clean-cut Boy’s Own all-American hero Superman in our ideologically complex modern world. Is that what Superman is? Based on critical and fan reaction to Man of Steel, your mileage may vary — some seem to find it fresh and invigorating, others a betrayal of what this archetypal superhero is meant to be.

Personally, I find it a valid thing to attempt. Rather than take the Superman mythology as read, here Nolan and co — including screenwriter David Goyer and director Zack Snyder — have tried to imagine what would really happen if an alien baby with incredible powers arrived in our world. So Clark Kent hides his abilities, goes on a trek around the world to ‘find himself’, and when he’s uncovered there’s mass media and military interest. Which is pretty accurate, I think. If some guy started stopping oil rigs collapsing single-handed, or flying around the place, the military’s hardly going to sit back and go, “oh OK then”.

Snyder emphasises this “it’s real!” tone with grainy handheld cinematography, which I’m sure is consciously designed to look like a ’70s independent drama. It’s also designed to mask a simple fact: such presentation details and a languorous first half aside, this is a pretty standard blockbuster. Shoot it with clean digital visuals and cut the “finding himself” segments back to a brisk first act and you’d have a completely standard array of big punch-ups and faintly ludicrous plotting. It’s interesting how much a ‘gritty’ sheen (as it were) can persuade people that what they’re watching is revolutionary across the board, but really it’s just a different way of presenting your common-or-garden blockbuster content.

The filmmakers have certainly bought into their own conceit, to a frankly laughable extent. The Blu-ray contains a featurette called All-Out Action, which the menu describes as follows: “The action in Man of Steel soars to new heights with a level of realism never before seen in a super hero film.” Hahahaha! Realism my arse. Once the action kicks in it’s positively comic book. Men are hurled around like rag dolls; Metropolis is destroyed in a huge flying punch-up, which just feels like a less effective re-hash of The Matrix Revolutions. There’s nothing wrong with comic book action in a comic book movie, in my opinion, but shooting it on desaturated grain-addled film stock with handshake and ragged zooms does not make your OTT computer-generated fight “soar to new heights with a level of realism never before seen”.

This is before we even get on to the morally divisive aspects of said fighting. Much talk focused on two elements (spoilers follow for the next three paragraphs): the large-scale destruction of Metropolis, and Superman killing Zod. Defenders say that destruction happens, that Metropolis was evacuated, and that Superman had no choice but to kill Zod to save innocent lives. Opposers say we don’t need to see so much disaster on screen (especially in the wake of other films, like The Avengers, showing similar city-level destruction), and that it’s out of character for Superman to murder someone in cold blood and it simply shouldn’t have happened. My view is split between the two.

As to the destruction of the city, I think the criticism is right. The city clearly isn’t evacuated before buildings start falling — it’s being evacuated, but no one even knew to start running before the Massive Machine Of Destruction (I forget what it was actually for) turns up and starts destroying things. People run into the streets as buildings fall on them. As a viewer, how can you miss that hundreds, possibly thousands, of innocents are dying? The cinematography makes it look like 9/11 — incredibly like 9/11, in fact. That was 12 years ago by the time of the film’s release, but is it OK to trade on such iconography in a blockbuster entertainment? Should we just ignore the notion that so many ‘extras’ are dying because, hey, it’s just a superhero movie? But aren’t we meant to be taking this as Real World, chaps?

The fate of Zod, on the other hand, is a different matter. I think it’s interesting to push heroes — heck, characters fullstop — in new and challenging directions. It’s all too easy to just avoid putting a character in a certain situation so you don’t have to see what they’d do; to give Superman an easy way to lock the villain up so he doesn’t have to make any other decision. But what if that isn’t an option? What if someone just as powerful is running around killing people at random; what if it’s within your power to stop him from imminently murdering a family with kids, but the only way to achieve that is to kill him? That’s the position Snyder, Goyer and Nolan put Superman in at the climax, and that’s the decision he has to make. Does he do the right thing? In fairness, I think that’s the debate the film is asking for. It’s not like Superman walks away fine with what he did, and I expect the idea is that his actions will have an impact on his values going forward.

There’s a lot else that Man of Steel plays with in the Superman legend besides the violence and cinematography. Some people will surely miss the bumbling Clark Kent, the burgeoning relationship with Lois Lane, and so on. These elements are eventually brought in, sometimes in a modified way, which makes it feel like they’ve been put in place — Superman Begins style — to be used in a sequel. Except we know the sequel is headed off in the Batman vs Superman direction, so how much ‘clumsy Clark’ we’ll get to see is questionable. I have to say, I don’t blame the makers going a new way — how do you compete with the Christopher Reeve classics? And if you try to emulate them, you end up with Superman Returns, which was a box office and critical success but for some reason is remembered as a failure in both regards.

A 21st Century reinvention of the oldest superhero is an interesting notion, and in some regards Man of Steel works; but those successes are regularly marred by superficial ‘innovations’ that don’t click. The final result is a standard blockbuster masquerading as something revolutionary; an adequate film that indulges itself, leading to a belief it’s something more, which is ultimately to the detriment of its audience.

Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009)

Posted on January 15, 2014 by badblokebob

From 1984 to 1994, a perfect storm of people and circumstances changed the face of animation forever.

So declares the title card at the start of this documentary, which covers how in just a few years Disney went from nearly shutting down its animation division to a period of immense critical acclaim and box office success, including the first animated movie to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

On the surface, it’s not a secret story. A significant part of the film is made up of contemporary news and documentary footage that clearly shows this was being covered at the time, and you can see more of the same just by looking into box office numbers and critical assessment. It’s also, to an extent, ‘race memory’ — we ‘all’ know of the Disney classics from earlier years, how this tailed off through the likes of The Black Cauldron, and then the renewed burst of creativity that began with The Little Mermaid and flowed through the likes of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, until (more or less) the end of the ’90s (before it all went wrong again, but that’s another story).

However, Waking Sleeping Beauty is told from the inside: director Don Hahn started out as an assistant director at Disney animation in the ’80s, graduating to producer by the time of Beauty and the Beast. With him he brings behind-the-scenes home movies and access to a stunning array of interviewees. Almost everyone who was anyone at Disney during that time is interviewed, either through archive footage or new audio commentary. It was a tough time, and while Hahn’s portrait is probably not quite warts-and-all, it comes damn close; for example, we get to see some of the caricatures the animators drew in disgust at their new boss, Jeffrey Katzenberg.

As best I can tell, Waking Sleeping Beauty is only available in the UK through certain streaming services (I watched it on Now TV, which it has now departed; I believe it may have been on Netflix, but again isn’t right now), which is a shame. The US DVD is reportedly packed with nearly an hour-and-a-half of additional interviews and the like, which makes it an enticing prospect.

As Disney’s ‘animated classics’ continue to be successful (with Wreck-It Ralph and Christmas-just-passed’s Frozen the most recent entries) and the focus of their business, from merchandise sales to attractions at their ever-popular theme parks, it’s easy to forget that the animation legacy nearly died — several times. Waking Sleeping Beauty does an excellent job of showing us how close they sailed to disaster, and how the dedication and creativity of individuals who believed in that legacy stopped the ship from sinking.

Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

Posted on December 25, 2013 by badblokebob

When the first Kick-Ass was released back in 2010, one of the main stories was that it had flopped at the box office. That was poppycock: it opened at #1 in the US, and because it was made for just $30m it more than broke even in the US alone, eventually earning a total of $96m worldwide. It was an even bigger hit on DVD and Blu-ray, with an uncommonly large percentage of home entertainment sales being on BD, helping it earn even more cash.

Come the release of Kick-Ass 2 in September 2013 and the first film was suddenly referred to as a renowned box office hit. I guess the media have very short memories. And it made a good stick to beat the sequel with, when it opened at #5 in the US with just $13m. What a flop! Except it only cost $28m, has gone on to make just over that in the US, and has climbed to a total of $59.6m worldwide. Not close to as big as the first film, but even before the inevitably-successful DVD & Blu-ray numbers that’s a strong performance.

Will we see a third film? That certainly looks plausible. Should we? Well…

Written and directed by Jeff Wadlow, based on two comic book miniseries (Hit-Girl and Kick-Ass 2) by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., the movie of Kick-Ass 2 rejoins the characters a couple of years on. A wave of Kick-Ass-inspired costumed heroes now patrol the streets, though Kick-Ass himself, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), has more or less retired. Mindy Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz) still fights crime as Hit-Girl, hiding that fact from her disapproving guardian (Morris Chestnut). Meanwhile, Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) wants revenge on Kick-Ass for murdering his father, but is being kept out of the way by his mother and the remains of his father’s mob organisation… until she dies in a freak accident, when Chris dubs himself “the Motherfucker” and sets about forming a gang of supervillains…

If that sounds like a convoluted setup, that’s kind of how it plays on screen too — and it’s only the start of it. This is a somewhat muddled second instalment, taking time to re-introduce us to various characters and follow all their stories. Whereas the first film introduced elements gradually as they came into contact with the central narrative of a schoolboy-turned-superhero, Kick-Ass 2 picks up each character when they’ve more or less gone their separate ways, then sets about bringing them together again. So rather than one straightforward thread that others naturally emerge alongside, here Wadlow must juggle three disparate tales from the start, before he eventually ties them together.

It feels a little meandering, then, as Kick-Ass joins up with a superhero team trying to do good, the Motherfucker gradually assembles his own team of villains, and Mindy tries to fit in as a regular high school girl. You can see the germs of good ideas here, but how well they function is debatable. Whereas the first film riffed on archetypal characters and plots from regular superhero movies, as such providing an entertaining deconstruction of the genre, the sequel doesn’t feel as focussed. The themes are somewhat familiar — superheroes leading to supervillains, as seen in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, or the assembly of superhero teams, as seen in The Avengers — but it seems these are coincidental similarities, not conscious points of reference, comparison, juxtaposition, or examination.

Wadlow is an inadequate replacement for the first film’s director/co-writer Matthew Vaughn. In fairness he’s working to an even tighter budget (in the deleted scenes, he reveals a whole 30-second action beat in the Hit Girl/Mother Russia fight was cut purely because they couldn’t afford a small patch of green screen replacement in one shot), but that’s not the real problem. There just aren’t as many gags, the action sequences aren’t as viscerally satisfying, the story meanders a bit in the middle rather than barrelling through like the first. In part this is the widely-identified fact that Moretz is now a teenager behaving like a teenager rather than the shocking/amusing pre-teen swearing like a sailor of the first movie, but it’s a more endemic problem than that. Whether it stems from Millar’s original comic or Wadlow’s treatment of it, I don’t know, but on the whole it feels less inventive, less vital, and consequently less exciting (though there are some good sequences) and less funny (though there are some proper laughs).

Wadlow does make welcome changes to Millar’s notoriously nihilistic comic, however: instead of gang-raping Kick-Ass’ girlfriend, the Motherfucker can’t get it up (I guess because Kick-Ass isn’t dating his mother (ho ho!)); instead of murdering Colonel Stars & Stripes’ dog, he remarks that “I’m not that evil!”; and so on. The film version still has its points of offensiveness and some outré ideas, certainly, but the needlessly-harsh edge has been taken off, especially when it comes to punishing characters who are innocent. With the exception of Kick-Ass’ dad, but then that’s a superhero staple… just one that’s more violently executed here than normal.

The quality cast keep the film watchable at all times, and the tight budget doesn’t always stand in the way — some of the green screen work may be shockingly cheap, as seen in the van sequence ever since the trailer, but the action choreography of such sequences is still good — meaning that Kick-Ass 2 remains entertaining for fans of the first outing. But it isn’t as strong a production all round, and doesn’t exceed the original in any regard — indeed, any emotional investment in the characters (and there is some) is carried over from the first film’s groundwork — meaning that those fans may be entertained, but will also be a bit disappointed.

So is Kick-Ass 3 a good idea? Kick-Ass 2 does provide a kind of conclusion to the story… but it also leaves it wide open for more, not to mention that Millar & Romita’s third comic book miniseries (currently running) is supposed to be the definitive final act for the characters. It would be a shame not to see that completed on screen, but perhaps with more care in how it’s executed.

This review is part of the 100 Films Advent Calendar 2013. Read more here.

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Category Archives: Genre

Premium Rush (2012)

Macbeth (1948)

Tom Conway as the Falcon, Part II

The Falcon in Hollywood (1944)

The Falcon in Mexico (1944)

The Falcon Out West (1944)

The Falcon and the Co-eds (1943)

Man of Steel (2013)

Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009)

Kick-Ass 2 (2013)