Subversive, my ass! No pun intended

There is a scene in Kick-ass in which a mob boss (Mark Strong) punches Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) in the face numerous times while she's lying on the floor. This is supposed to be justified by the fact that Hit Girl has been trained to be an assassin since she was 5. She's tough, she can take it. This is just one of the many questionable things that this movie puts its characters through. And then it asks us to buy it as satire, subversiveness, entertainment.
Based on the comic-book by Mark Millar, the movie follows Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a high school geek who one day decides that it would be cool to put on a costume and become a super-hero because hey, if Bruce Wayne could do it and he had no real powers... Right? Dave takes on the name Kick-Ass and starts patrolling the streets at night. The results aren't exactly encouraging because Dave gets not only beaten up but also stabbed.However, he does become a cultural phenomenon and soon realizes that thanks to him, other people got it into their minds that they can become superheroes. Eventually, Dave crosses paths with Hit Girl, the before mentioned 11 year-old assassin whose mouth would make Quentin Tarantino blush, her father, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a 17 year wacko with his own agenda. They all drag poor Dave into a war against the mob...
I wanted to love this movie so bad. I'm a huge superhero geek and this concept sounded appealing to me from the get go. And I have to be fair and say that I was perfectly aware of all the controversy surrounding the movie, especially Chloe Moretz. I was prepared for a hard R rated bloodfest. Or at least I thought I was

This has got to be on of the most mean-spirited and cynical movies to come out in recent years. It portrays violence as something hip, cool and shows it for the sake of shock value. When you show such explicit violence, you need to have some context or motivation for it. For example, the Bride in Kill Bill or Marv in Sin city were characters who resort to extreme violence to get what they want. But they had a goal to achieve. They were driven by revenge and their actions were meant to lead somewhere. Kick-Ass shows violence just to get a reaction out of the audience. Granted, Big Daddy has a motive of his own for turning his daughter into a cold-blooded assassin, but it's used in a pretty limp way and is an excuse for Hit Girl to chop people's heads off.
Another thing that bothered the hell out of me is the inexplicable and sudden change in tone. The movie starts in a cheerful manner and shows what it would be like if someone woke up and decided to become a superhero pretty well. But the moment Dave meets Big Daddy and Hit Girl and the violence really kicks in, I started hating this movie. We get the before mentioned scene of Hit Girl getting punched in the face, another character is beaten with a baseball bat to a pulp and then practically burned alive...
Another major issue is that the movie presents itself as a satire of the superhero genre. But the whole thing (the second half especially) takes itself too seriously for that. The violence is very real, people die in the most hideous ways. This is not making fun of anything, no matter how much it tries to convince itself that it is.
Admirers of the movie (and there are many) call it "subversive", that it has a point, that its graphic nature is aimed towards a point. I disagree. In order to be subversive, a movie has to stand-up for something bigger, prove something.
Which brings me to my next point...
Others call Kick-Ass this generation's Fight club. Again, apples and oranges. Yes, Fight club is violent and agressive as all hell but the characters in that movie used violence for escaping their "pathetic" lives, it gave them purpose... It was a reflection on how miserable people can get in a modern society. That's subversive!
To be fair, Kick-Ass is very well and expertly made. Director Matthew Vaughn (Layer cake and Stardust) takes advantage of the limited budget in the best possible way. The movie looks great, has some effective action sequences. No problem with the acting, either. Chloe Moretz for all intents and purposes steals the movie and Nicolas Cage continues his sort of come-back that began with Bad lieutenant:Port of call New Orleans.
All that would be fine if the movie went for something more than just senseless violence just for the sake of being cool. I know that I'm in the minority here and I'm sure that a lot of people are tell me that I should lighten up and not take this too seriously. And that's fine, everyone has the right to interpret a movie in any way they see fit. Me, I just can't watch a child being beaten senseless or someone being burned alive and call it "entertainment" And if that makes me not hip and uncool... I'm proud to be not hip and uncool