[Disclaimer: This is a review of the unfinished print of the film screened to critics in late February, which had unfinished sound and music (there was a particularly annoying ‘Barber of Seville’ place-filler track over a bunch of scenes), and what appeared to be an unfinished animation sequence.]

On the surface, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) looks just like your typical dweeby high school student. He sucks at sport, goes unnoticed by girls and hangs out at the local comic book emporium. But when Dave dons his special mail-order green wetsuit he becomes… well, he becomes a guy in a wetsuit. Kick-Ass, the crime-fighting alter-ego Dave creates for himself, has no superpowers or extraordinary abilities, except for what he describes as an elevated capacity to take a kicking. This is the delicious premise of Kick-Ass. There’s been a lot of fun had with humanising new and classic superheroes of late – the Watchmen, Hancock, the Incredibles, the perpetually broody Spider-Man, etc. – but, in Kick-Ass, we finally have a new ‘superhero’ that is just some guy, as pathetically ‘human’ as the rest of us.  

Meanwhile, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his eleven-year-old daughter Hit Girl (Chloë Moretz) are honing their skills and buying toys to become bona fide superheroes. Cage is the best he’s been in years in this role, probably because he’s enjoying himself, replicating that unmistakable Adam West cadence as soon as he dons his Batman-style gear. Moretz, as the Internets will have told you by now, is a revelation, a foul-mouthed, pocket-sized version of The Bride in total command of the best action sequences of the film. It’s a child role that eats other child roles for breakfast – Moretz herself played another ho-hum precocious kid sister in 500 Days of Summer – and Moretz owns it.

Then there’s Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), son of local drug baron and bad guy Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong). Chris eventually becomes Red Mist, a would-be supervillain posing as a superhero, with the best superhero outfit of the lot of them (it includes a cape). It’s off with the specs at last for Mintz-Plasse – all the better to see his evil sideways glances – and his performance is all the better for it. This is Mintz-Plasse bidding farewell to McLovin’, and not a moment too soon.  

Kick-Ass is directed by Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Stardust) with style and flair – he makes the gymnastic shoot-out sequences look easy – but it’s fairer to say that Kick-Ass comes from the mind of comic world artist/demigod Mark Millar. Millar created Wanted and has also spent a lot of time shaking up the DC and Marvel universes, so it’s no surprise that Kick-Ass shows off its self-awareness, saluting and subverting comic book conventions with good humour. This is, of course, just the kind of thing to endear it to newcomers and long-time comic book aficionados. In fact, the place-filler soundtrack at this early screening gives an idea of just how well Kick-Ass plays into the superhero tradition: John Williams’s score from Superman sounded out as Dave gets into his wetsuit and Danny Elfman’s score from Batman accompanied the scenes in Chris’s own Batmobile, a red Ford Mustang. It’s just a shame there’s no way these will make it to the final cut.  

Action and comedy is no new cocktail, but there’s something striking about the particular blend in Kick-Ass. If Wanted was Chuck Palahniuk-does-superheroes, Kick-Ass could be Superbad meets Superman. Dave fantasises over his English teacher, discusses the finer details of comic book heroes and skillfully avoids telling token hot girl Katie that he’s not gay. But then it’s also gloriously brutal. When Dave gets his own ass kicked during his first attempt at fighting crime, it starts off funny – he looks ridiculous – but the sudden fierceness of the scene takes everyone by surprise. Kick-Ass could have easily been played for easy laughs the whole way through, but this is the point at which Kick-Ass announces, loudly and proudly, that it’s taking a different route, and it’s especially not going to compromise on sheer bloody violence. What’s more, further to some spectacular death scenes, there are sequences that would rival those of the most gripping and thought-provoking action drama.  

This won’t be a unique observation – watch us film critics flock to this one – but if you have a movie called Kick-Ass, you sure as hell want to make sure it lives up to its title. Kick-Ass delivers the swift boot up the backside it promises, and keeps on kicking.

Kick-Ass opens in cinemas around Australia on Thursday, April 8.
You can view the Kick-Ass movie trailer here on TheVine.