Kick-Ass 2 picks up right where the last one left off. Dave Lizewski a.k.a Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has retired from crime fighting but has inspired numerous citizens to become superheroes and start fighting crime. Mindy McCready a.k.a. Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) is still honoring the legacy of her father by continuing to fight crime after his death. Hit-Girl eventually convinces Kick-Ass to put the suit back on, but after their first mission together, Mindy's guardian Marcus (Morris Chestnut) makes her swear to stop fighting crime and start acting more like the rest of the girls her age. After Hit-Girl reluctantly quits crime and starts to assimilate to the life of a normal teenage girl , Kick-Ass joins up with a newly-minted group of crime fighters knows as Justice Forever led by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey). After a period of limited activity, the group faces a huge threat from Chris D'Mico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) known as at The Motherfucker, who wants revenge on Kick-Ass for killing his dad and hires a team of hardened criminals to become a gang of supervillians and rip apart Dave's life at the seams. With all this chaos happening around her, Mindy has to decide if she wants to stick down her path of normalcy or become Hit-Girl again and save a city that desperately needs her help.
Kick-Ass 2 benefits from having a lot of the same charms as the first one. Writer/director Jeff Wadlow does his best at creating a similar comical, gory and energetic atmosphere while not ripping off the manic vibe Matthew Vaughn established in the original. Wadlow isn't as skilled of a filmmaker as Vaughn, but he more than holds his own with the film and for better or worse, stays more faithful to the lunacy of the comics then the first one did while adding a surprising amount of heart for a dark film with such a high body count. Keeping with the continuity of the original, the cast makes this material shine. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is just as likable as the nerdy title character. He grows more into the character and become more of an actual hero than just a dude running around in spandex. Christopher Mintz-Plasse is even more entertaining as the rich-kid who goes completely off the deep end after the death of his father. The role of The Motherfucker is so unlike everything else he has done in his career and he captures the bat-shit insanity and smugness of the character so well. Mintz-Plasse will always be known as McLovin', but this role deserves to be right up there in his career highlight reel. Once again like the original, Kick-Ass 2 belongs to Chloe Grace Moretz. This film is actually more of Mindy's story than Dave's as she is seen having an identity crisis of whether she should try to fit in with the in-crowd of girls at her school or follow her heart and her dad's vision and fight crime and keep the city safe. Moretz nails the expanded role giving Mindy/Hit-Girl more depth and continues to show why at only age 16, she is one of the most consistently great actresses in Hollywood. In addition to the returning characters, I really liked how the new heroes were integrated into the story and the presence of more average people helping to clean up the streets added to the comic value. None of them have substantial roles, but they all make the most of their time on-screen (especially Jim Carrey as Colonel Stars and Stripes, the ex-mob enforcer turned born-again Christian crime fighter and Donald Faison as Doctor Gravity, a copy writer who is armed with a spiked bat) and help the giant, blood-soaked finale be that much more satisfying. Kick-Ass 2 is a whole hell of a lot of fun and while it may not entirely live up to the original, it's a worthwhile sequel that captures a lot of the magic that made the original special.
4/5 Stars
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