The first movie was helmed by Matthew Vaughn while the sequel is by Jeff Wadlow. It starts with Dave or Kick-Ass (Johnson) and Mindy or Hit Girl (Moretz) back in high school but still moonlighting as superheroes to help fight crime in New York. Mindy’s dad is dead and she lives with her guardian, Det. Marcus (Morris Chestnut), who subsequently succeeds in persuading her to drop her double life and just live the normal life of a high school girl.
Part of the first movie is Chris (Christopher Mintz Plasse), who was the superhero Red Mist. Now, he wants to be the supreme villain called Motherfucker after he unintentionally killed his own mom while she’s sunbathing. He is bent on taking revenge on Kick-Ass for killing his crime lord dad. He inherited so much money that he assembles his personal army of villains led by the formidable Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina), a woman bodybuilder who looks more like a man with breasts. The sequence where she ferociously decimates an entire platoon of cops in mobile patrols is actually better staged than all the destruction we saw Gen. Zod wrought in “Man of Steel”.
Dave fails to convince Mindy to help him anew and, in her stead, he gets to work with other masked vigilantes like Night Bitch (Lindy Booth), Dr. Gravity (Donald Faison) and a husband and wife team called Remembering Tommy in honor of their kidnapped son. Their team is a parody of Justice League, Watchmen and The Avengers, with Col. Stars and Stripes (an unrecognizable Jim Carrey) as their leader, an ex-mobster who became a born again Christian. The sequence where they rescue some Asian girls from human traffickers in a sex slavery den is excitingly staged, but the colonel is quickly dispatched by Motherfucker.
The movie works as an action-comedy but it really forays into very dark territory with its scenes of extreme violence and even sadism. Motherfucker wears a sado-masochism fetish costume and overacts all over the place.
Johnson does well as Kick-Ass but the movie’s best asset is certainly Moretz and her character, Mindy, who makes the movie a truly entertaining jaunt in the Kick-Ass-Mindy universe. We’ve never been a fan of anyone lately but this girl really blew us way. We also like her in “Let the Right One In” (where she played a girl vampire) and “Hugo”, but she’s at her best in “Kick-Ass 2” with her energy and vibrance. The sequence where she gets even with the mean bitches who oppress her in high school is truly a hoot. As viewers, we totally connect with her character. We can’t wait to see her in the remake of “Carrie” with her inheriting the role popularized by Sissy Spacek. Honestly, we enjoyed “Kick-Ass 2” more than other recent U.S. summer releases like “Man of Steel”, “World War Z” and “Wolverine” which honestly made us feel sleepy.
