Monday, September 6, 2010

Reflections on a tween-age assassin

Kick Ass, you have caused me to reflect more about how I feel about the contents of a movie than anything I've seen in a long time. That's right, I'm talking about you, Hit Girl. (I'm going to try not to be too spoilery. Oh, and this isn't a review, by the way.)

One of the main characters in Kick Ass is a tween-aged girl named Mindy Macready (Chloe Grace Moretz). She's cute as a bug and has been trained by her nut case ex-cop father, Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage), in all manner of fighting skills so that she can assist him in tracking down and killing the drug kingpin responsible for her mother's death. Known as Hit Girl, her alter ego sports a mask, a purple wig and a variation on a catholic school girl uniform.

Keep in mind I'm a fan of movies in general. It has to be REALLY bad for me not to like it or at least be entertained by it. Even the horrible ones are entertaining because they are SO bad.

After watching Kick Ass, I have an extraordinary (for me, anyway) amount of mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was AWESOME to see a girl kick so much butt. On the other, I'm horrified by the way this child was raised. And her language... oh, my goodness. I have a potty mouth, but this girl puts me to shame.

I know that this is fiction but it makes me wonder about the children being raised in those survivalist compounds or communes that you hear about in the media. I also wonder about Chloe Moretz and how playing roles of this type may affect her; her next role is the child vampire in Let Me In, the American remake of the excellent Let the Right One In. If I were a parent, I know I would not feel comfortable allowing my child to portray such characters.

Roger Ebert's review of Kick Ass is here. He has some interesting points to make about it.

Have you seen Kick Ass? Did it make you think? Do you have a movie that you can't stop thinking about?

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