Kick Ass...

I've been slacking off a bit on the movie musing front of late, but then again the cinema-going has been a bit slack of late, what with it being a surprisingly sporadic start to the year film wise. That said, despite the on-off nature of our cine-trips so far this year, there have been a number of gems - and Kick Ass has certainly kicked off the summer season early with a bang.

Gleefully grown up in its approach, it never stops having fun, cherry-picking from genre heavy weights such as Spider-Man out of respect on one hand and parody on the other. Surrounded by a 'moral panic' storm-in-a-teacup (mainly because of Chloe Moretz's part as Hit Girl), it's not as gory or mouthy as you might have thought from the "rabble rabble" approach of some killjoys in the tablod 'meeja'.

Mind you, there's a gut-load of violence and a mouth-ful of bad language on offer ... Peter Parker's achey-breaky-heart for Mary-Jane this is not ... it's ruder than that. It's a balls-out-swinging-in-the-breeze kind of a flick, a riotously entertaining experience which is quite simply a bloody good fun time to be had.

It's also an impressive offering from Matthew Vaughn, who kicked Guy Ritchie's arse with Layer Cake ... but I never bothered with Stardust; it's not my bag ... Kick Ass is a big budget indie that scared the big name players who came begging once they saw the Comic-Con crowd lapping up the preview footage. Vaughn's direction has a confidence to it that is often lacking these days - the action sequences in the second half are particularly well put together. Perfectly paced in the editing room, perfectly shot on set, and presented with clear-cut direction, the wham-bam of the latter half can leave you unsure of how it's all going to turn out with curve balls galore (plot wise, visuals wise, editing wise), switching you from an audience-wide knowing-chuckle to audience-wide gasp of "ooh, ouch, ahh". Backed up with some choice cuts from the John Murphy music catalogue (tracks from 28 Days Later and Sunshine were put to utterly thrilling, skin-chilling use), the arse kicking of Kick Ass really does deliver.

To cut a long story short, and in-keeping with the no-nonsense approach of Kick Ass, the flick is a seriously fun time and I'll be hoping for a features packed, just-as-entertaining double disc DVD experience in a few months time.