Risky Flicks: Kingsman (The Secret Service)

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

Dir. Matthew Vaughn

Written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn

Starring Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Michael Caine

The challenge: Oh good, finally, a movie about a white guy who is unfairly ignored by the world which doesn’t appreciate his obvious greatness, and then he learns that because of his father he’s destined to be a great warrior, and kills a bunch of bad guys, and then he feels much better about himself and everyone agrees he’s awesome. Why haven’t they ever thought to do that one before?  

What’s the risk?

• I thought the two last Mark Millar adaptations I watched --WANTED and KICK-ASS-- were just overwhelmingly unpleasant, idiotic, empowerment-fantasy porn for angry, self-pitying, narcissistic gamergate types. And this is by the same director and the same writer as KICK-ASS, probably my most viscerally hated movie of the last half-decade.
• The lead character is named Eggsy. And he has a face so aggressively punchable that when Jesus said to, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” he went on to specifically add, ”...although, there is this one little broke-ass little bitch Eggsy, and it’s completely OK if you just want to start wailing on him for no reason. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and say, I would completely understand and encourage you to do so. I’m Jesus Christ and I approve this message.”
• KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE is a title which just gets more confusing with each unnecessary added word, and it adds up to a awkward mouthful which somehow still communicates no clear point. Also it ends up that they’re an international cartel and not, in fact, related to the monarchy in any way, so not “Kingsmen” by any comprehensible measure. And while they are sort of a service, I guess, which is secret, the “Secret Service” is already a thing, and they’re not that thing. It’s like if they made a film about a group of English citizens who enjoy collecting antique rifles and called it “Kingsmen: The National Rifle Association.” Technically accurate, maybe, but a bit confusing, don’t you think?
• Somebody said something about an anal rape joke?

Possible Mitigating Factors:

• Matthew Vaughn. As much as I loathed KICK-ASS with every fiber of my being, I’ve actually enjoyed everything else he’s done (X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, LAYER CAKE, and I haven’t seen it but people keep telling me STARDUST is fun) and was willing to blame Millar for the shitty source material rather than Vaughn.
• Great cast -- Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Sam Jackson, Michael Caine, and what the hell, Mark Hamill’s in there too!

The Case:

So, this one has plenty of potentially problematic factors that got the ol’ internet predictably riled up. There is a surprisingly nasty conservative streak in there (the bad guys are black, liberal environmentalists, the good guys are aristocratic white Englishmen, and they [spoiler]  kill Obama as a joke, after he is depicted as complicit in mass murder) but again, I just can’t get as mad as the rest of the internet did about that because, come on, it’s just a nasty movie in general, and its desperate desire to offend is so transparent that it’s almost cute. Almost. Like KICK-ASS, the movie is gilded with a regrettable spitefulness that labors under the mistaken impression that going too far is the same thing as being provocative. So it delights in wallowing in embarrassing stereotypes, casual ultra-violence, and played-out misogyny under the proudly waving banner that offending people is the same as telling off the man or subverting the genre. So brave. It’s unappealing, but fortunately it does this on a more desperate, juvenile level than either of Millar’s other two cinematic adaptations; it’s more of a lonely teenager doodling swastikas in his notebook so people will notice him than it is the impotent white rage of a mass shooter that underpins the guiding logic of KICK-ASS and WANTED. It wants to shock you so you’ll think it’s cool, not because it really has any opinions on anything. And ironically, that turns out to be the bigger problem here. But at least it’s a better problem to have than being an inspiring hero’s journey for the angry nerds who aspire to be violent bullies. Baby steps. Plus, again, Mark Hamill’s in it!

Basically, the setup is this: There’s a ultra-secret “service” of upper-crusty white British guys, who are under the authority of no government but have taken it upon themselves to dispatch brutal vigilante justice whenever they feel it will benefit the world as they see it. They have all sorts of James-Bondy gadgets and a lavish HQ/training facility with all sorts of colorfully outrageous trap rooms, etc. But when an agent dies trying to save Mark Hamill, one of their arguably more open-minded members (Colin Firth, APARTMENT ZERO) decides to recruit the son of a fallen colleague, who turns out to be our man Eggsy (Taron Egerton, the upcoming LEGEND with Tom Hardy). Eggsy is as unpleasant a protagonist as they come, with his “U won 2 step up m8?” wannabe attitude and self-pitying sullenness. But Firth, clearly relishing his unusual role as an action hero, more than makes up for it, playing the part with a startlingly precise ear for tone, equal parts superhero swagger and prim English deadpan comedy. Firth has to induct Eggsy into the world of the “Kingsmen” and prepare him for a series of deadly auditions against --you guessed it-- snobby fancy-pants types who have been training for this moment their whole lives (will his streetwise, loose cannon moxie help him outsmart these over-educated prissies? I’ll never tell). You’d think Firth would explain a little more about what’s going on to Eggsy before throwing him in there, but you know how things go. I mean, you literally know how things go, since I think you can probably figure out beat-for-beat what happens with these auditions without me explaining further (side note: apparently the three abilities you need to be a Kingsman are: figuring out to breath air trapped in a toilet in a flooded room, skydiving, and being able to shoot a puppy). Unfortunately all is not well in Kingsman-world, because a nefarious Samuel Jackson has an inexplicable, convoluted plan to kill of most of the population in order to save the environment. Will our intrepid hero be able to solve this problem and avenge someone, possibly his mentor but you never know, it could be anyone, by using violence? Who can say for sure.

Never judge a man til you walk a mile in his gimmicky spy gadget shoes. After that, though, judge away.

This is a pretty dumb movie, but I honestly have to give it this: it’s reasonably well-structured, paced nicely (especially given its 129 minute runtime) and sprinkled with some fabulously executed fight sequences. While obviously you should take the internet’s opinion that this is without doubt the greatest action movie of all time!!!1 with a grain of salt large enough to safely guarantee a steady supply of margaritas well into the next century, I cannot tell a lie, there are a handful of scenes here which are genuinely impressive. Firth, with the generous assistance of a lot of computers, manages to seem wonderfully athletic and graceful as he dances his way through inflicting bodily harm on people using his gentlemanly umbrella as a club, sling, and sword. The action itself is splendidly shot, often in show-offy long “takes” (composed of short takes grafted together with computers, but it looks cool) which depict with loving clarity the gleeful mayhem our heroes are inflicting. There is one scene in particular -- a delirious symphony of ultra-violence set to “Freebird” for no discernable reason other than their spiritual kinship in wild excess, dazzling technical proficiency, and brainless overkill-- which surely has to rank among the most impressive action spectacles of 2014. These moments of inarguable brilliance are somewhat few and far-between --other action sequences are professional but disposable, particularly the laboriously protracted but instantly forgettable climax-- but it would be unconscionable to ignore the nearly peerless strength of Vaughn’s best material here.

Alas, it is his very strengths as a filmmaker that undermine him here. Vaughn has a tremendous talent at creating well-paced, energetic, and entertaining pop entertainment, but here he never quite allows us to be seduced by the world he’s set up. For all the money at his disposal, all his great cast, all his obvious effort to craft a well-structured hero’s journey,* Vaughn keeps insisting throughout the entire film that we shouldn’t bother to take any of this seriously, that the heart of what he’s trying to do is not really to tell a story but to provide structure for a not-especially-pointed parody of the action-spy genre. Every time you start to actually care about the story  -- and you will, because Vaughn’s a terrific scene builder and working with a raft of wonderful actors -- it seems like he can’t wait to ruin it with some dumb hacky reference to another movie which just pulls you right back out again. Just as he did in KICK-ASS, Vaughn seems to think that just adding blood is the same as subverting our expectations, or commenting on the genre -- and he wants us to be never less than fully aware that this is his intention. So every single fucking beat in the movie is accompanied by some stupid postmodern quip meant to remind you how much more self-aware this movie is than the very movies from which it takes all of its best parts.

This is what happens when an Englishman misses tea time.

But just being “self-aware” is not the same thing as actually having anything to say. For a movie that keeps insisting it’s a cheeky parody, it’s just not very funny. The jokes are lazy and sophomoric, and most of its references are so punishingly generic they’d barely stand up as satire in a late-season SNL sketch, let alone a film which obvious thinks it’s being hip and subversive. Jackson’s villain character makes a big joke about how he’s not going to reveal his plan because “it’s not that kind of movie.” Nevermind that this exact postmodern joke is almost as old as that trope it’s mocking, when was the last time you actually even saw a movie do that? Fundamentally, KINGSMAN’s toothless pokes at dusty cliches are not really any more substantial than the dire reference-fest oeuvre of the infamous Freidberg/Seltzer movies, a comparison so toxic that it may well invoke Godwin’s law. Even the basic structure here belies the idea that the authors had any real understanding of the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of the genre they’re trying to comment on-- how many genre-defining spy thrillers can you think of that are set up as a Campbellian Hero’s Journey? Virtually none. Hence, the parody can hardly be anything but superficial. And superficially, the Bond movies are basically already parodies of themselves. Is there anything more desperately lame than a over-the-top parody of something which was already a deadpan comedy?

So it’s a long movie which consistently seeks to remind us it’s not really about the plot, but then fails to offer any workable alternative theory about what it is about. By default, then, it ends up being about nothing at all, purely an exercise in sound and fury, signifying nothing, not even the most modest aspiration of callow wish-fulfillment fantasy. Even a solidly conservative hit piece would be preferable; I might not like it, but at least it would be something. Here, the prickly traces of angry conservatism sprinkled throughout the plot don’t add up to any kind of meaningful commentary or worldview. Just like the lazily generic Bond references, they sit there stillborn, sputtering in a stew of underbaked ingredients, drowning under the slow pull of a black hole of intention. Just because they’re there doesn’t give them meaning. And no one else ever tries.

See, this looks good but it should be a lot more awesome than it is in context.

Simply being a meaningless, superficial postmodern joke isn’t death for a movie like this. Being an unfunny one is a little more of a problem, but still not enough to sink the whole operation. There’s lots to like here; I mean, thanks to Vaughn’s sharp direction and cast, there’s nearly always something entertaining happening on-screen. But it does seem like kind of a shame that so much talent has gone into something so disposable here. I’m not asking for Shakespeare, but would it have been so untenably unhip to even pretend the movie cares about the plot, considering it takes up so much runtime? This seems like a lot of effort to go through to tell a story, only to keep assuring us it isn’t important and we shouldn’t care. I mean, it actually is a solid action movie when it sets its mind to it -- so why not just actually be an action movie? Why deflect from the one thing it genuinely does well with a much of broad meta winking at the camera? It actually feels kinda insecure to try and have it both ways, like your annoying friend who has to add an uncomfortable “just kidding!” after everything he says if it doesn’t seem to be going over well. But that just immediately deflates any possibility of either the comedy or the drama ever having much punch. The fabled Anal Sex Joke that got everyone so angried up is a classic example. I get that it’s an attempt to subvert the classic Bond double-entendres by instead going the opposite route into artless vulgarity. But what is it doing there, right in the middle of the climax, as things are supposed to be getting exciting? It’s so blatantly referential and so broadly comic that it’s impossible to get too invested in the sequence which follows it -- which happens to be the climax! With this, they exchange any possibility of an exciting, thrilling action sequence for --at best-- a mild chuckle at how rude they’re being. Not a very good trade.

The Verdict:

Well, considering I thought there was a good chance I would out-and-out hate this one, I guess being moderately but legitimately entertained by it is a pretty positive outcome. It’s surely more evidence that Vaughn is a genuine talent, and that in particular his ability to direct strong action sequences has only improved with age. Still, I can’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment that despite all the tools available to him, Vaughn decided to make something so lazy and disposable. He’s still disappointingly hung up on the rather dull idea that simply adding more explicit button-pushing content to tired old genre hokum is A) hilarious or B) subversive. I guess it’s working out for him because these movies have been big hits, but it’s a shame to see an artist with such unusual deftness for the kinetic possibilities of cinema making such uninteresting and uninvolving movies. Here’s hoping this success gives him the confidence to try something with a little more meat. I mean, it doesn’t have to be philosophical or tasteful (perish the thought!); I’d settle for a movie which can simply stand on its own two feet without having to define itself via what it’s not. Once Vaughn figures that one out, I think he may really have something.

*Even if that just meant in this case lifting the entire plot wholesale from MEN IN BLACK, at least that’s a fine source to steal from.

Mary Poppins could do this too, she just chose not to.

The Crimson Cult aka Curse of the Crimson Altar

The Crimson Cult (1968) aka Curse of the Crimson Altar (that's the title that appears on the version I saw)
Dir. Vernon Sewell
Written by Marvyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln. Supposedly adapted from an H. P. Lovecraft story (uncredited)
Starring Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Barbara Steele, Michael Gough, Mark Eden

What obscene prayer or human sacrifice can satisfy the devil-god? Hard to say, since no one ever mentions any of those things in the movie

This is pretty much of interest for camp value only, unfortunately. As such, it might be fitfully amusing, but honestly it’s mostly too dull to even be essential viewing as ironic enjoyment.

The plot revolves around Antique dealer Mark Eden arriving at Christopher Lee’s creepy castle in search of his brother or, that failing, some lukewarm British sex with Lee’s hot niece (one of these goals gets accomplished during the film's runtime, the other is pretty much forgotten about. I’ll let you guess which is which). He keeps dreaming of Barbara Steel painted green and sporting big curly horns, as we all do from time to time, except that in his dream she’s hanging around with a beefy dude in an S & M getup wearing a hat topped with two huge elk antlers*, a jury of green weirdos in animal masks, and a bunch of bearded monks, which I have to admit is a less common part of that dream and possibly cause for some concern.

Ok, Now I have your attention.

Although it has a sort of quintessential swinging 60’s cheerful datedness that sets it apart from, say, the Hammer Studio productions, there’s really only two memorable things about this mess. One is a quick moment of meta-humor when Lee’s niece quips, “It’s like a house from one of those old horror movies!” to which her companion replies, “I know, I it’s like Boris Karloff is going to pop up at any moment.” That Karloff does indeed show up mere minutes later is left uncommented on. The movie as a whole actually has a surprising meta awareness for being this early -- it even cutely tries to play with our expectations about the genre, liberally sprinkling some familiar cliches which turn out to be red herrings. It’s not enough to make it surprising or even interesting, but it’s kind of cute to see them try and be genre-aware way back in 1968. Guess Wes Craven didn’t invent postmodernism after all.

The second memorable thing about this is the stunning obliviousness of its main character. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a movie character so completely unable to take a hint. He’s the kind of guy who’s going to sit around with the openly evil Lee and Karloff and volunteer, ‘Oh, I say, your mentally ill butler accosted me earlier today and told me that I should be fearful of my life because you two were trying to kill me! I thought it rather droll myself, but I thought you ought to know, gentlemen that we are!’ Most damning is the scene where Karloff uncorks a bottle of very, very fine brandy and rhapsodizes about its beauty and character while savoring the aroma with a face as close to orgasmic as I care to see Boris Karloff get. So what does this knucklehead do while Karloff is talking? He downs his snifter in a single gulp, and announces, “It’s nice.” If they hadn’t been planning to kill him before, they sure are now. And the fucker does this in like three separate scenes! You’d think after awhile they’d just learn to stop giving him the good stuff.

Anyway, if you have seen every other horror movie on Earth except the Platinum Dunes remakes and anything by Charles Band, this one I guess is at least amiable enough that you could do worse. It has some early hints of the changing face of horror cinema, including some nods to genre expectations, some awkward endearingly innocent 60’s nudity, and some pre-giallo attempts at surreal saturated lighting schemes, so that’s sort of interesting. For a horror completists to half-watch while stoned or joking around with a crowd, it might be entertaining enough. Otherwise, you can probably skip it.

I just want to say that this multi-colored spinning lamp is a great effect and I fully expect to see it in a Tarantino film at some point.

 
*Actually it turns out that this apparently out-of-the-blue weirdness has an explanation: this dude is the legendary British mythological figure Herne the Hunter, first mentioned by William Shakespeare, featured prominently in Susan Cooper’s excellent Dark is Rising series, and now appearing as a non-speaking extra in CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTER/CRIMSON CULT. Dude needs to fire his agent.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: Supposedly.
BOOBIES: Yeah, there's a gratuitous sex scene, but its pretty tame.
> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: No gore.
SEQUEL: No
OBSCURITY LEVEL: highish mid. Despite the good cast, it's not too well known.
MONSTERS: Green skin + horns = close enough.
SATANISTS: I think they're witch-worshipers, but close enough.
ZOMBIES: None.
VAMPIRES: No.
SLASHERS: Nah.
CURSES: A witch's curse supposedly started this whole thing.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: God, no.
 

Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass (2010)

Dir. Matthew Vaughn

Written by Jane Golman, Matthew Vaughn
Starring Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Mortez, Nicholas Cage

So I took another look at this one, wondering if having seen it in the midst of its initial run I was being reactionary in finding it an unpleasant experience. Nerds at large fell hard for this one, finally getting their long-coveted “hard R” superhero movie and feeling very grown up about themselves. The critics, too, mostly praised its kinetic pace and lightly postmodern take on the subject (this was back in the days before postmodern “What if a real person became a superhero?” films actually outnumbered legit superhero films [2018 edit: well, that was fun while it lasted]). But I thought it was a kind of nasty, stupid, ugly little thing just barely concealed in a sugary coat of glossy Hollywood professionalism. Most of the people who seemed to share my point of view were the typical family values censorial puritans [2018 edit: yes, there was a time when evangelicals actually purported to care about values]. But both Roger Ebert and Outlaw Vern agreed with me, which is pretty good company to be in if you’re going to be defending an unpopular opinion. Still, I wondered if I would learn to love this one like all my peers did if I took a little time away from it and returned knowing what was in store.

Nope. Turns out I was right the first time, this thing is a craftily concealed little pill of pure hate dressed up in fun action tropes. I guess I might have known that considering it came from the comic by Mark Millar, who wrote the indefensibly vile WANTED. I consider him to be perhaps the reigning auteurial voice of impotent white beta-male rage, and WANTED is a very nearly impeccable manifesto of school-shooter logic, the kind of movie where the moral of the story can be almost any kind of loony abstraction ("you should never disobey the orders of a magic loom that tells you to kill") as long as the disempowered young white men at its center are given the basic license to achieve erection self-actualization through murderous violence. But the weird thing is, I’m not sure Millar is at fault here, at least not entirely. I’ve never read his comic, but the film seems to me to be shockingly unaware –willfully, even—of what the story it's telling is actually about. If it's an even moderately faithful adaptation, I have to assume that the point its author was trying to make is the exact opposite point the movie seems to posit. Or, I guess the two could both be equally deluded, but for that to be so would require such a titanic failure of self-awareness as to cause the mind to balk.

Here’s the thing: KICK-ASS is about a bunch of bitter, deluded, pathetic, hate-fueled losers who feel better about themselves only when they successfully commit acts of violence against other people. No one here even pretends to have humanitarian motives – they do what they do because it’s a nice confidence booster, to be able to beat people up or murder them and get away with it makes them feel special. And because they’re fighting crime, it’s all nice and morally justified and they can spout some platitudes about justice or whatever and not have to ask uncomfortable questions about why they're so angry and empty inside. That's the entire plot of the movie, more or less.

This would be a reasonably interesting take on the Superhero trope, had they chosen to actually develop this subtext (which admittedly was already better explored in the WATCHMEN movie, and already much, much better explored in the Watchmen comics waaaay back in the 80s). Not exactly a hot take, but certainly a valid point; the entire concept of the Superhero, for all its posing about responsibility and justice and Law and Order, is nothing but a juvenile power fantasy, barely dressed up in the rags of Campbellian hero's journey mythos. Obvious, perhaps, but always worth a reminder, especially for the kind of nerds who would take this movie seriously. The terrifying thing about KICK-ASS THE MOVIE, though, is that instead of exploring what seems like the most obvious thing to draw out of the story --these people are toxic, egomaniacal monsters fueling their boundless sense of worthlessness with comically sophomoric violent posturing-- it’s totally on these guys’ side. It really thinks they’re fucking awesome, and the more violent they get the more awesome it thinks they are.

Which is, I think, what makes it such an unsettling experience to me. It's the kind of film which plays into all the worst tendencies of nerd culture – validating their misogyny, their secret feelings of superiority, their bitter, simmering rage. This is the movie where the geeks are right, girls really do only like jerks. Nice guys might as well be gay to them (and I don't mean that figuratively -- that is literally a subplot here). But if you become a successful enough bully, the girl who previously ignored you can hardly wait to fuck you in an ally (again, no exaggeration. Literally depicted). The subtext is about empowerment, validation, and popularity through violence, and there's no other way to see it. The movie even makes explicit this point. Kick-Ass is a selfish, whiny little prick who's ready to retire after committing one “heroic” act and feeling better about himself. But he has one thing to do first: go tell his crush that he's a hero so she'll fuck him. “What's the difference between Peter Parker and Spider Man?” Kick-Ass sneers, “Spider Man gets the girl.”

Is that really the difference, though? Since you brought it up, KICK-ASS, let's actually talk about Spider-Man a little bit. Peter Parker isn't like Batman, he's not living a faux life as cover for his superheroing. He's actually living a real life, trying to balance his superhero moonlighting with his responsibilities to his family and loved ones, all while grinding by in a low-paying, unflashy working-class job. He's got plenty to complain about, but instead he's sweet and upbeat, heroically taking abuse from people who think he's irresponsible and unreliable due to his anonymous webslinging. He could easily tell everyone that he's Spider-Man and probably do a lot better for himself, but he doesn't.* That's not what it's about. Besides, it's not like Spidey is thorax-deep in women, either. Sure, Black Cat is a babe, but it's Peter Parker, not Spidey, who ends up finding long-term happiness with the likes Mary Jane and (briefly) Gwen Stacy. Not because he's a hero, but because he's a good guy and an unselfish friend. He doesn't get the girl because she thinks it's hot that he beats up baddies -- he gets her in spite of feeling obligated to put his own life second in order to make the world safer. Spider-Man is Peter's burden, not his fantasy. He lives a double-life as Spider-Man because he's cursed with abilities which make him uniquely suited to helping the world.

At the end of KICK-ASS, the title character mocks the classic Spider-Man ethos by musing (in his incessant, self-satisfied narration), that, “With no power comes no responsibility,” and it's supposed to count as character growth that he goes ahead and kills a few people even though he didn't technically have to and probably won't even be substantially rewarded for it. That line should tell you everything you need to know about KICK-ASS's horrifyingly self-serving philosophy, but it also demonstrates perfectly just how little he actually took from the comic books he's constantly prattling on about and using as a smug cover for being a vicious little sociopath. I mean, do you really think Peter Parker would have just led a life of selfish instant gratification had he not been bitten by that radioactive/genetically altered spider? If Uncle Ben had been killed and Peter didn't have superpowers, would he just have shrugged it off and gone into middle management at an investment bank because, "with no power comes no responsibility?" Fuck no. He's in the game to help people, to make the world better. 

And that's something Kick-Ass --both the character and the movie-- just fundamentally misunderstand. For all its nonstop self-congratulatory meta-commentary, the film and its title character get the whole concept of the hero (super or otherwise!) fundamentally backwards, and, to all appearances, don't have the slightest awareness of that fact. KICK-ASS's idea of a hero is simply someone whose self-gratification generally lines up with brutalizing criminals. That's it. The idea that they're pursuing any kind of philosophy of justice, let alone making the world a better place, is paid only the most transparent and fleeting lip service, and mostly ignored entirely. Every so-called hero in the movie is in it for entirely (and explicitly!) selfish reasons, and the movie never for an instant seems to find this fact curious or noteworthy. In many cases, they make life considerably worse for other people. When Kick-Ass learns that an impersonator has been savagely murdered in his stead, it doesn't even occur to him to feel a twinge of remorse or regret for what he's started. He's just glad someone else got killed first so he has a heads-up to save his own ass.

Only one person in the film seems aware that they’re playing a sociopath, and that’s the reliably eccentric Nicholas Cage (PAY THE GHOST, THE FROZEN GROUND, DOG EAT DOG, MOM AND DAD, and also I believe he won an Academy Award at some point?) in one of his court-mandated five great performances per decade. He plays "Big Daddy," an emotionally stunted single father who forces his 11-year old daughter to become a vicious, remorseless assassin, a premise which the movie thinks is just so edgy it can barely contain itself about how daring and brave it is, and it doesn't like to use the word "hero," but you know, what else do you call someone --an artist, say-- with the balls to stand up to those Hillary Clinton PC thugs of the world who wanna tell you how to live your life man, fuck you Tipper Gore I don't conform to your delicate sensibilities, I'm an outlaw, I'm dangerous, baby, look at that, I put an 11-year old killing people with a sword in my movie and you're like, so outraged, GOD MOM WHY DO YOU ALWAYS RUIN MY STUFF? STAY OUT OF MY ROOM OK?! GOD.

As much as the movie wants you to think this guy’s awesome, though, Cage lets you know what a spaced-out psycho he is with his Ned Flanders mustache (he actually adds a fake handlebar to his real mustache when he dawns his crime-fighting persona, a touch of genius I must assume came from Cage), hilariously nutty gay southern drawl (he should have a talk show with Gary Oldman from THE FIFTH ELEMENT) and magnificent vacant-eyed uncomfortable earnestness. He immediately reads as someone who stands outside a bus terminal all day with a terrifyingly artificial smile, softly telling people they'll burn in hell for their mini-dresses and Beatle boots. He's good at killing, but he's a total, abject failure as a father and as a human being. The movie is totally on his side, and falls all over itself trying to convince you how badass he is, but Cage brilliantly undermines the effort by putting just a hint of overblown theatrical flair into his superhero persona. Cage knows how to look cool as a superhero type, but here he (intentionally, I truly believe) makes the character look like a kid playing in a Batman costume, subtly reminding you that this guy isn't so much a serious gritty hero as a big self-absorbed child who happens to own a lot of guns.

                  Nic Cage auditioning for BLACK SWAN 2: UGLY DUCKLING

Other than that, though, the movie is dead set on convincing you how awesome these guys are, and the scary thing is that it’s devilishly good at making the whole thing fun, funny, and kinetic. It’s a pretty good time, objectively, and I have to imagine Matthew Vaughn has a genuinely fun action comedy in him somewhere.** But this ain’t it. This is a serial killer film where we’re supposed to cheer for the killers and think they’re cool. It idolizes violence, makes a tacit (and occasionally even explicit) argument for violence as a necessary tool for self-actualization. Which gives the screen violence an unpleasant, pushy feel, like an aggressive drunk getting in your face about something you basically already agree about. Shit, man, I love movie violence! I didn’t watch every FRIDAY THE 13th just for the sex scenes. But this thing worships the violence so feverishly, and so steadfastly refuses to introspect about the obvious horror story playing out in its narrative that it's actually a turn-off. It manages to make a guy flying a jetpack shooting chain guns feel like a bummer. My god, there's a special place in hell for that.

If it had anything to say about anything at all, that might even be OK. With a film this short on ideas, though, it just feels uncomfortably close to trying to win friends by feeding into people's worst traits and validating their most selfish fantasies. If you let yourself get sucked into its nasty little fable about discovering how special you are by beating people up, I imagine it can be a kind of powerful, seductive fantasy. But watching from the outside is pretty horrifying. And as we've watched exactly the demographic this movie is courting metastasize from angry unfulfilled basement-lurkers into nihilistic, rape-threat-spewing crypto-fascists, it's gotten harder and harder to see it as harmless, irresponsible mayhem. Movies may not cause people to turn bad, but sometimes they reveal a lot about the kind of person who does. And sitting through KICK-ASS is an uncomfortably slick tour through the mind of a very unpleasant person indeed. Not my idea of a fun trip.

*2018 edit: Actually I guess he does go public about being Spider-Man sometime in the mid-2000s in a book written -- ha, of course it was-- by Mark Millar. Anyone know how that turned out?

** 2018 edit: turns out I liked X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, but was pretty mixed on KINGSMEN, which has a lot of the same problems as this one but watered down. I hear STARDUST is fun, though!

Helvetica

Helvetica (2007)
dir. Gary Hustwit

The concept of making a full-length documentary about a type face almost seems like a joke -- particularly when you hear that HELVETICA is not some fancy title for a history of printed word or something. The whole film literally is about the Helvetica font. There's a little bit about its history (it was invented in 1957 in Switzerland) at the beginning, but mostly the whole film consists of two things:

1: Interviews with graphic designers who talk a little about their own philosophy, how it relates to Helvetica, and what they think of Helvetica and

2: Musical montages of public signs throughout the world which are set in Helvetica.

That's it, that's all you get. But if that sounds absurdly narrow and dry, the movie has a trick up its sleeve: despite being almost obsessively about Helvetica and Helvetica-related topics, it's not really actually about Helvetica. It's about the evolution of design in the last century, in particular the long running grudge match between modernism and postmodernism.

As they interview more and more graphic artists, a trend slowly emerges. There are some guys extolling the virtues of Helvetica, singing its praises, almost lustfully articulating its perfection. Other guys can barely contain their disgust and compare it to fast food, bureaucracy, and even fascism.  At first, there's kind of a cheap thrill in chuckling at these weirdos gnashing their teeth at the proliferation of a type face as if it were a pestilence on the land, but slowly you'll begin to notice that there's something else going on. All the guys who love it are old guys talking about how effective it is, how by communicating clearly and without overt personality it is the ultimate elegant expression of lettering. The guys who hate it are middle age guys who feel that graphic design should be expressive and communicative beyond the content -- that type face has personality which is essential to any kind of meaningful expression of design.

They don't use the words too often, but without directly expressing it they lay out the philosophical history of the art form, merely by putting this one innocuous and ubiquitous type face in front of people who are passionate about what they do, and letting them react to it. It's a nice trick, and it allows the film to benefit from its narrow focus while still speaking to larger and more accessible ideas. Its obsessive interest in this one particular font would be pretty pointless without the subtext about the changing artform, but, curiously, the subtext is also made far more interesting by its unusually limited focus. Helvetica really is the star of the show, and the filmmakers take great pains to remind us just how deeply a part of everyday life this particular type face is. That it goes unnoticed and unremarked on by most of us makes it all the more interesting to have it isolated and placed under the microscope in this manner.

Despite all this, the movie is so stubbornly single-minded that it can drag a little. Most of the interviews are interesting, but they get a little repetitive since there's only so many basic philosophies to articulate and relate Helvetica to. After awhile you get the sense that these guys might have more interesting opinions about other topics, which the film is completely disinterested in exploring. And while the camera's fascination with Helvetica signs nicely adds to the intriguingly zen fixation on Helvetica, they probably don't need to spend minutes on end staring at airport signs to convey the point. The point is a good one, but after experiencing Helvetica fresh after the first few diversions to do this sort of thing, it becomes something akin to the repetition of a mantra and ends up losing all meaning again. They want to be so clear that it ends up muddled and meaningless. The filmmakers might take a hint from designer Dave Carson --  "Don't confuse legibility with communication"