matthew vaughn

after a run of frankly dire films which has seen t reluctant to even watch a dvd, as she was felting the other night i idled in with kick ass. i was hoping it might be okay but expecting less than that so i figured she could watch it in between the wool action.

how wrong. we were glued to it. i've always been a fan of layer cake and vaughn returns to the same colour palette that he used in that. if there's a director who loves yellow more than he does then i don't know who it is. plus he seems to have a fascination for industrial settings that i've yet to see equalled. and aside from all that, even if you're not up for the violence, explosions, script etc you get to play spot the art. any scene that sets up the baddie with marc quinn's blood head is alright with me.

and it's this attention to detail i was loving from the start. the film is alive with references, not ladled on as some sort of homage but just there, letting you know the writers, the director etc are all really into it (check out the credits for the spice girl henchmen). this is reflected in the performances which are uniformly excellent. mark strong in particular is delightfully unhinged. exception must be made obviously for nicolas cage, for whom the words great performance should never be applied. here, he says, he's channelling his inner adam west. it's just wrong.

one of my other reasons for watching was the media controversy around chloe moretz's language. true if you're not a fan of the salty language then this isn't for you and, apparently, swathes of journalists were shocked out their seats by the sight of an eleven year old girl calling the bad guys 'cunts'. they seemed somewhat less appalled by the ensuing violence. and for me this is the issue around which the film revolved. true there are other moral questions raised but the sight of a wee lassie as the main protagonist in laying down gleeful savagery i found genuinely disquieting.

at the same time at no point did i have the slightest doubt that my own daughter at eleven would have loved it. as with his references vaughn makes it plain he's questioning this (a similar tack is taken to the issue of the aftermath of killing in layer cake) as the character of hit girl jokes with her dad she wants a puppy and a bratz makeover for her birthday when in fact she wants a set of knives. hit girl is doubled against the girlfriend of kick ass who occupies a much more conventional set of behaviours. she needs the hero's assistance, she wants him at home rather than endangering himself. hit girl has no such conscience but then again she is a child soldier and endowed with all the viciousness that such a state can bring.

of course there are bum notes. nicolas cage every time he's on screen for instance, even if you could argue that given the source material there's needs to be an element of cheese. and vaughn it appears, can't do fire.
but those are small complaints. if you're after a film that does characters, dialogue, action and still manages to ask questions without needing to beat you around the head with them, this is worth a watch.

so much so that t and i are reserving a rainy winter's day to watch all three vaughn movies, stardust, kick ass and layer cake, in that order. i look forward to it.