Does exactly what it says on the tin

Kick Ass
DIRECTED BY: Matthew Vaughn
STARRING: Aaron
Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mark Strong
CERT: 16

You wouldn’t know by the weather but the summer blockbuster season is almost upon us – and what’s this coming over the hill? An action movie based on a series of graphic novels? Oh no, I hear you groan. Someone please put me down.
My sentiments exactly.
But wait – Kick Ass is no ordinary comic book movie. This isn’t another mega-budget, CGI, 3D extravaganza with the power to bust box office blocks with all the character and personality of a three-legged, senile horse.
It’s a small-budget, independent feature whose creators gleefully exploit the freedom of not having to answer to the studio suits or adhere to their cinema cliché and big explosion quotas.
And so it plays like what might have happened if Quentin Tarantino had made a superhero movie in the days before he had access to big bucks – though he probably would still have gone out of his way to reference an obscure French comic from the 1930s that was lost when the Nazis came to Paris, then resurfaced in Sweden after the war, before appearing in the background in a film by Ingmar Bergman, whose entire body of work was in fact an anguished love letter to comic strip hero, The Phantom.
Matthew Vaughn, the director of Layer Cake and Stardust, isn’t much into that kind of nonsense. He’s made a movie that simply wants to be a blast – to be as funny as it is unapologetically gory. And though it doesn’t always work, it’s still a fine bit of entertainment.
Dave Lizewski (Johnson) is a typical teenager – driven mad with hormones and possessing a superpower familiar to young boys everywhere – the ability to be invisible to girls.
To set things right and get himself noticed, he buys a green wetsuit, makes his own hero costume and christens himself Kick Ass. Then off he goes to fight crime wherever he may find it. Unfortunately, he has neglected the small matter of being able to actually fight, so instead of saving the world and getting the girl, all he gets is a good hiding.
But his efforts soon catch the eye of a somewhat more talented crime-fighting duo – ex cop Big Daddy (Cage) and his ferocious daughter Hit Girl (Moretz), an 11-year-old trained in all sorts of deadly combat.
Young Dave might be in the masked crusader business simply to get some female action, but these two have more serious matters in mind – like hunting down the villain Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong), whose own son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) has dreams of taking to the streets as the wannabe enforcer, Red Mist.
It’s mostly a hoot and the likeable cast are game for the fun – Nicolas Cage, in particular, stands out as the quirky villain-killin’ dad, simply on account of this being the best thing he’s done in a very long time.
The film does tend to get a tad repetitive and outstays its welcome in the end, but the fun is worth it while it lasts.

Clash Of The Titans
DIRECTED BY: Louis
Leterrier
STARRING: Sam
Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Alexa
Davalos
CERT: 12A

What’s the word – remake? Retread? Reimagining? Rehash?
In any case, it would be just a smidgen inaccurate to say that Clash Of The Titans is a re-something of a very silly film from 1981, though that particular feature could well do with a decent re-whatever. I’m just not sure you can call it a re-thingumajig of a fairly recent movie, when the tale itself has been doing the rounds since about the fourth century AD. It’s kind of like saying Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ was a Cecil B DeMille re-whatnot and neglecting to mention that the New Testament story emerged in first century Palestine.
But nevermind. All is not well in Argos – most items from the new catalogue are out of stock on Christmas Eve and the crowds are baying for blood.
Meanwhile in the ancient Greek city of Argos (where Guitar Hero 17 and the Trusty Dust-Busting Sucky Vacuumy Yoke are as yet unknown), the mortals have had it up to here with the gods and their meddling in human affairs.
Rather than invite Richard Dawkins to come and explain to the locals that Zeus (Neeson) doesn’t actually exist, the King of Argos declares war instead – enlisting the help of fisherman and demi-god Perseus (Worthington), who himself has a bit of a bone to pick with the gods over the death of his family.
Zeus, meanwhile, sets his brother Hades (Fiennes) on the silly human upstarts and our friendly god of the underworld threatens that unless the king presents his daughter Andromeda (Davalos) as a sacrifice, then he’ll unleash the Kraken on them all, so he will.
What ensues is one big and usually very impressive action set piece after the next, with occasional pauses for breath and a few lines of very dodgy dialogue – while Perseus gallops around looking for the dreaded Medusa, battling with big giant scorpions and trying to save the day before the audience decide they’ve had enough of the crappy 3D and storm out madder than a head full of snakes.
And blockbuster season hasn’t even begun.