I finally saw Kick-Ass on Thursday and it’s a wild ride to be certain and is a film I have a feeling fans are going to be running back to see three and four times. As a non-comic book reader I was unfamiliar with the source material and I typically look at online fanboy excitement as a sign of something that won’t necessarily speak to me and having avoided the red band trailers and only saw the first MPAA-approved teaser I still wasn’t sold. Perhaps that’s because Kick-Ass is merely an avenue to introduce 11-year-old Chloe Moretz as the true star of the movie… the gun-toting master of the double-edged blade known as Hit Girl.
Dave Itzkoff has just published a new interview piece at the New York Times on Moretz and her performance as the young, foul-mouthed and violent masked vigilante and there are some choice quotes and a nice response from director Matthew Vaugn concerning the condemnation of the film as not only does Hit Girl leave a river of blood and body parts in her wake, but she also employs some colorful language while doing so.
While saying the role was something no actress has really been offered since Natalie Portman in Leon, Chloe’s mother has yet to allow the youngster to see the film. Nor has she seen Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver or Angelina Jolie in Wanted, all R-rated films and the latter served as the inspiration for Chloe to reach out to her representatives and say, “I really want to do an Angelina Jolie-type character. You know, like an action hero, woman empowerment, awesome, take-charge leading role.” However, she was allowed to watch Kill Bill in preparation for the role to which she said, “It was hilarious. It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m killing people with real blood.’ It’s fake.”
Even better, Chloe is still yet to be allowed to wear heels as her family is definitely keeping her aging process in check, including using her 23-year-old brother Trevor as he acting coach. When asked if there was anything she wanted to do on screen that her family would not yet allow, Chloe said, “I want to wear heels, if that counts. Just give me some Christian Louboutins and a gun.”
Trust me, the excitement she shows in that last quote alone is mirrored in Kick-Ass and the film is all the more fun for it.
The recent concerns over Hit Girl’s language in the film comes up and most specifically the use of the word “cunts” coming out of an 11-year-old’s mouth, which was most notably challenged by David Cox at The Guardian saying, “The c-word has become acceptable parlance for children in mainstream movies. We’ll be the poorer for it.”
The best response to this comes from director Matthew Vaughn saying, “I was like, ‘Does it not bother you that she killed about 53 people in this film?’ I’m like, ‘Would you rather your daughter swore, or became a masked vigilante killer?’ They’re going, ‘Yeah, I don’t know.'”
I’ll have a full review of Kick-Ass when it hits theaters next Friday, April 16, and Chloe will be seen in the “Let the Right One In” American remake Let Me In on October 1 and she’s been cast in Martin Scorsese’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret as well as Ami Canaan Mann’s The Fields opposite Sam Worthington.
Now get a taste of Chloe in Kick-Ass with a new clip featured directly below and get more from the film including our gallery of 36 images and several clips and trailers right here, including one of the red band trailers here. You can read the full “New York Times” interview piece here.
