Kick Ass (2010)

"Kick Ass" is a superhero flick like no other: Horrifically violent, vulgar, and a self-aware smart ass romp that rips a hole into the underside of whiner Spider-Man’s long johns.

This is no kiddie flick, not by a long shot because the youngsters on screen are beaten, stabbed, shot and pulverized in a dizzying spell of nastiness. Any moral person should flee from this film. I dug it.

Aaron Johnson plays Dave Lizewski, a comic book-collecting high school loser who fancies himself a wall-crawling, bullet stopping hero of the night. But here’s the crazy catch -- Dave is dumb enough to actually go out into the night and play superhero. Five seconds into his first criminal bust, Dave is beaten, stabbed and run over.

The Kick Ass of the title is Dave’s moniker, but as one man quips, it out to be Ass Kick. That man is an ex-cop (a grounded Nicolas Cage in a rare great performance) who’s way unstable, haunts the NYC night as a murderous Batman-knockoff and is schooling his young grade-school daughter (Chloe Moretz) to be his Robin. A way-scary Robin with a Marine's mouth.

This is a zany fantasy that regularly dives into high comedy before jumping feet first into hardcore Tarantino-inspired action. It takes the whole comic book genre down a few notches, but loves the film type all the same. B+