Kick-Ass Raises Concern for Chloe Moretz
After earning cult status as a comic, Kick-Ass is coming to the big screen on April 16 with a subversive blend of comic action and realistic gore -- much of it courtesy of a foul-mouthed, knife-wielding 11-year-old assassin called Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and her father, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage). At one point, Big Daddy shoots the girl squarely in the chest, and only after she bounces up smiling does the audience realize she's wearing a bulletproof vest.
These are boundary-pushing scenes, no doubt, even for an R-rated film, and Cage admitted in an interview that he was originally unsure where filmmakers should draw the line. "There were a lot of feelings about [the violence]," he said of Chloe's character. "I was concerned. I knew it was going to be something that was uncomfortable for me as an actor."
At the same time, Cage knew from past experience that being uneasy on set often leads to truly compelling on-camera work. What's more, the actor opposed any softening of Chloe's scenes as a matter of principle. "My belief is that any art form is by nature freedom of speech," he said. "You can come out and say, 'Chloe Moretz's character is a icon of feminist strength.' Because women go to see this movie and they're really wowed by it. They love her character and how powerful she is."
"It depends how you come into the movie and what your agenda is," the actor continued. "Hopefully you won't have any agenda and you'll just go and see an rated-R movie and receive whatever it is the director wanted you to receive. But if you have an agenda going in and say, 'It's inappropriate,' you can pick that argument."
Chloe at the Los Angeles premiere of Kick-Ass, April 2010
That's just the agenda that many have had since the release of the film's red-band trailer, where Hit Girl hurls a certain four-letter C-word at a group of bad guys. Fans and critics duked it out on the Internet over whether a minor, even in a movie, should use such language. Chloe herself is taking it in stride. "It's a character. It's not real life," says the 13-year-old. "I'd never said those words before. My parents would kill me if I did."
Helping assuage Cage's concerns as well was the simple fact that, regardless of age, Chloe is a remarkable actress. "I knew about her right away that she was marvelously charismatic and had her own unique sense of humor," he said. "I knew she had star presence."
That's an opinion shared by Kick-Ass's director Matthew Vaughn, who has compared Moretz's performance to Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver and Natalie Portmanin The Professional -- both films that Moretz's parents won't allow her see. "Chloe is so convincing in the role that I actually, in the back of my mind, feel she could kick my ass," enthuses Mark Millar, the creator of the Kick-Ass series. "But then I was sitting behind her at the premiere in London, and she was covering her eyes at the scary bits. You forget she's just a tiny little child."