Review of "Kick-Ass"

The Detroit News


Everything you've likely heard about "Kick-Ass" is true, providing you've heard it's profane, outlandish, ultra-violent, shocking, funny and wildly entertaining.

If you've heard it's a movie about bunnies sniffing dandelions, that's not true.

What "Zombieland" did for zombie movies -- that is, celebrate and goose the genre while parodying it -- "Kick-Ass" does in the loudest possible terms for comic book movies.

From its color palette to the fantasy life of its protagonist and the evil empire of its villain, "Kick-Ass" is the classic stuff of comics, and indeed it began life as a Mark Millar comic book series.

But everything here is played in high-camp opera mode, way over the top.

Thus you get Hit Girl, played by Chloe Moretz, a slice-and-dice murderous 11-year-old who swears like a sailor while smiling sweetly.

Most of the controversy surrounding the movie involves the wisdom (or lack thereof) in letting an 11-year-old girl use language like that.

Very little of the controversy has to do with the fact that the little girl's character probably shoots, guts, gouges and otherwise rips to shreds more than 50 adults in the course of the movie.

Little girls killing people; that's something we can live with. Little girls swearing, on the other hand, now that's upsetting.

Sigh.

"Kick-Ass" is the story of typical teen Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a comic book geek who wonders what would happen if somebody actually did put on a costume and try to do heroic things.

So he gets a costume and, assuming the moniker Kick-Ass, tries to dissuade a couple of thugs. That doesn't go so well.

Still, if at first you don't succeed, you get beat up again. And he is more successful in his next mission, thwarting a gang beating, and somebody films his struggle with a cell phone. Soon he's all over the Internet, causing quite the sensation.

Less than thrilled are Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his daughter, Hit Girl. They really are superheroes, in a Batman and really foul-mouthed tiny Robin kind of way.

Daddy has a vengeance thing going for the city's main gangster, and he's trained his daughter to be a one-girl dynamo of death. They can tell Kick-Ass has his heart in the right place, but he's a raw amateur.

This all coalesces into a tale where the three go after the gangster and his many, many doomed thug associates, with yet another superhero type -- Red Mist (played by "Superbad" geek Christopher Mintz-Plasse) -- involved in the mix.

Director Matthew Vaughn, who co-wrote the script with Jane Goldman, has plenty of experience when it comes to violence on film. He was a producer on "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch," and directed "Layer Cake" -- some of the best British gangster films of the past two decades.

And, in many ways, "Kick-Ass" does share an absurdist-violent tone with those other films, a morbid sense of slash-and-bash comedy.

Here a lot of the film's success comes directly from shock value. The very inclusion of Hit Girl -- and let's face it, she makes the movie and Moretz is a natural -- ups the ante right off the bat.

But Vaughn wisely lets the saltiness and brutality of the film build, zapping the audience with tastes of what's to come. By the time the firefight is going full force, you're stunned but not surprised.

And that's stunned in a good way. "Kick-Ass" is overwhelming entertainment that knocks you to the back of your seat and leaves your jaw hanging. Hit Girl and friends may not be much as role models, but they sure know how to have a good time.

Review of "Date Night"

Detroit News

"Date Night" is, not surprisingly, a date movie.

Its slapstick story of a married couple enduring outrageous fortune offers a lot of laughs, a bit of romance and plenty for either sex to relate to.

What makes it funnier than it has any right to be -- aside from the recurring image of a blithely shirtless Mark Wahlberg -- is Tina Fey, whose asides, improvs and double takes not only overcome the formulaic story, they make it not even matter. Yeah, here come the bad guys again -- omigod, what did she just say?

Fey may be the funniest person alive right now; she's certainly one of the most successful funny people alive. With her TV powerhouse "30 Rock" packing more chuckles in a minute than most shows do in 30 and her nation-rocking Sarah Palin impersonation poised to rule the next presidential election cycle (don't kid yourself, the Fey factor may alter American history), she's everywhere and we're undoubtedly better for it.

"Date Night," though, pretty much exposes and celebrates her approach to humor. She's not some grandmaster comic in the tradition of Richard Pryor or George Carlin or even Ricky Gervais, concocting elaborate routines that ask big questions.

She is instead a mistress of quick-jab observations and quips, filled with common man-woman desires and insecurities. When she cries in anguish as the "little rainbow spinning thing" comes on her computer, who can't relate? And what the heck is that thing called?

As a result "Date Night" never pretends to be a great film. It's a series of quickie jokes built into a predictable storyline, goosed consistently by Fey and Steve Carell. It offers nothing beyond silly entertainment and the opportunity to recognize one's own self in far-fetched circumstance.

At times it's bliss, at times mundane. But when Fey speaks, you almost always laugh.

The far-fetched circumstance at hand involves husband and wife Phil (Carell) and Claire (Fey) Foster, New Jersey suburbanites who try to break the monotony of family life with a date every week, usually to the same dull restaurant.

When the couple finds out a pair of friends are abandoning their marriage, they try to up the ante on date night and head for a fancy Manhattan restaurant, where they, of course, can't get a table.

So when a hostess comes by calling for Tripplehorn, party of two and no one responds, Phil decides to seize the moment and steal the reservation.

Unfortunately for the Fosters, fortunately for the audience, it turns out the Tripplehorns have stolen something very valuable, and all sorts of nasty people want to get it back. When the thugs out to reclaim said item mistake the Fosters for the Tripplehorns, the chase is on.

Wackiness ensues, and director Shawn Levy ("Night at the Museum"), following a script by Josh Klausner, trails our on-the-run couple from Central Park ("the Central Park," Claire says) to a police precinct house to the grungy apartment of the real Tripplehorns (who use the name because Jean Tripplehorn is such a "fine actress," which she is) to the subway, a strip club and beyond.

There are a lot of cameos here -- Kristen Wiig, Mark Ruffalo, Ray Liotta, William Fichtner, Leighton Meester -- but James Franco and Mila Kunis break away from the pack as the heavily tattooed and thoroughly profane Tripplehorns.

The great recurring joke, though, is Wahlberg, playing some ex-military, absurdly muscled superspy-type who helps the Fosters from the comfort of his apartment while unconsciously tantalizing Claire and making Phil feel rightfully inadequate.

Levy succumbs to the car chase temptation that plagues films like this, and the storyline goes broader than needed (the ending abandons all sense), while Carell veers dangerously close to "Get Smart" territory at times.

But ultimately "Date Night" is effective, harmless fun that leaves you satisfied while wondering -- can Tina Fey do better than this? And also -- should she have to?

Review of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

Detroit News

Leathered, pierced, pale and tattooed, Lisbeth Salander is both damaged and dangerous, a sharp little knife of a woman who also happens to be a computer hacker extraordinaire.

In many ways, she is the ultimate modern heroine, a timely and tough moral compass who has made the three Stieg Larsson novels she stars in international best-sellers.

Now Lisbeth, played with constant edge by Noomi Rapace, comes to film with the "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," a Swedish film already a smash hit in Europe.

As with any novel-to-film adaptation, something gets lost in the translation, but not much. Director Niels Arden Oplev and screenwriters Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg manage to stuff nearly all of Larsson's first novel into this movie, which includes the novel's weaknesses.

In "Tattoo," the antisocial Lisbeth becomes involved with middle-aged journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) who is investigating the decades-earlier disappearance of a Swedish industrial heiress.

It's a tawdry story involving Nazis, sexual abuse and a great deal of violence against women, but it takes a while to get rolling. Before Lisbeth and Mikael team up, we follow them separately; and quite frankly, following Lisbeth is a heck of a lot more interesting than following Mikael.

When it comes to visual entertainment, hot, pierced, tattooed tough girls beat journalists any day.

Luckily there's enough Lisbeth in the film's first hour to keep things (very) interesting; and once she's motorcycling down the movie's main road, the flick catches fire.

Mikael's character works as a balance to Lisbeth's -- he's almost as bland as she is outrageous, and while he deals with adversity (he's scheduled to go to prison following a slander charge), she endures absolute horror-show situations. An early attack on Lisbeth, and her consequent retaliation, is the stuff of nightmares.

In this case, opposites attract and work well together, and Larsson's far-reaching mystery gives the film plenty of room to travel.

Still, it's all about Lisbeth, and the previously unknown Rapace brings just the right stoic seethe to the character with her tight body a seeming constant knot of tension. You never want her to leave the screen.

Director Oplev stumbles a bit at the very end as he separates Lisbeth and Mikael for no apparent reason (one of the book's complications is missing from the film). But overall he succeeds in capturing both the tone and passion of Larsson's novel.

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" tackles misogyny, capitalism, racism and political fanaticism, but in the end it's all about the girl. And they got the girl very right.

You don't mess with Lisbeth Salander. And you'd do well not to miss her, either.

Clash of the Titans review

Detroit News

Apparently the gods need better agents.

The 1981 sword-and-sandals mythology muck "Clash of the Titans" was absolutely awful, a smattering of Brit-prestige actors gumming out corny lines broken up occasionally by absurd action sequences that held a certain cheesy charm but which, in the end, looked ridiculous.

So, of course, Hollywood -- following the motto "No matter how bad it was, we can make it worse" -- chose to remake it.

And so here we have "Clash of the Titans" 2010, and Zeus, Hades, Poseidon and all the rest should be ashamed.

Again, there's that smattering of semi-prestigious actors (Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Pete Postlewaithe) and occasional surprises (Elizabeth McGovern!) somehow reduced to sounding as if they're in a mediocre high school play.

The action sequences, despite three decades worth of technological progress, manage to be just as ungainly as the originals, carrying no real thrills, just a lot of disconnected noise, in the way of so many post-"Transformers" aspiring blockbusters.

And here's the real kick -- it's in 3-D! Since America is going crazy for 3-D right now ("Avatar," "Alice in Wonderland," "How to Train Your Dragon") -- this will have to be a smash.

Imagine our heroes battling giant sand crabs in 3-D. It will be amazing!

No, it won't. Actually, the 3-D in "Clash of the Titans" is precisely what the movie industry should be worried about -- a low-quality carnival ruse, added after the film was completed, pretending to be something special so that a surcharge can be added to the price of a ticket.

Neither immersing nor shocking, it is instead mostly just a mild perspective shift and it certainly can't hide how awful the film is overall. This should be the film that teaches audiences all 3-D is not created equal.

Also not created equal is Perseus (Sam Worthington). The son of Zeus (Neeson) and a mortal woman, he is raised by a fisherman and his wife (Postlewaithe, McGovern) until they are wiped out by Hades (Fiennes) in a bit of boating butchery.

Soon after, Perseus discovers he is a demigod. And to save the city of Argos and take his revenge on Hades, he must slay a series of monsters, including those giant sand crabs, Medusa and some big bad monster waiting to come out of the sea.

All of this has something to do with humans wanting to be free of the gods' tyranny, and the gods feeding off human prayer and fear. Care has been taken to infuse much talk of this into the script and it is mind-numbingly dull.

Anyway, Perseus picks up a band of not-so-merry souls to help him in the hunt, as well as one eternity-living babe (Gemma Arterton). Together they march through the land of stiff dialogue and ho-hum action.

In terms of blame, let's start with director Louis Leterrier but not forget screenwriters Travis Beacham, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. But let's be kind and lay the rest at the feet of the gods.

This is the third special-effects blockbuster the previously unknown Worthington has headlined within a year, having played a robot ("Terminator Salvation") and a disabled soldier/giant blue Catman ("Avatar") previously and to far better effect. The best that can be said is he shares his embarrassment with good company here.

Fifteen minutes into this film you want to leave. Half an hour in you attempt to revel in the awfulness. Ten more minutes, though, and you want to leave again. That craving never subsides until you're out the door. "Clash of the Titans" is just about as bad as movies get.