Coming out only a few weeks before the big Marvel release of the year IRON MAN 2, KICK ASS is the perfect antidote to all the superpowered shenanigans of recent years. Taken from the comic book by Mark Millar, it's not a mean-spirited mickey take of the superhero genre, but a look at what a real hero's life would be like without powers. And it's absolutely hilarious.

It's also hideously violent. The body count is absolutely massive and the fact that most of them are as a result of the acrobatic gun and blade play of an eleven year old girl isn't going to make it film of the year of any moral majority groups, but the violence is mainly comic book in nature (we certainly don't know an eleven year old who can do those sorts of things and are pretty glad about it) and is more often than not played for laughs. As is the language which is of the strongest order, but again mainly played for the laughs.

Aaron Johnson makes for a very likeable hero, though he doesn't really stand out, allowing Chloe Moretz to steal every single scene that she is in as Hit Girl. Nicolas Cage finally ends his streak of poor movies with a great fun role as Big Daddy, whose superhero voice is clearly a spoof of Christian Bale's Batman growl and is brilliant. Mark Strong rounds out the major cast as brutal bad guy Frank D'Amico who thinks nothing of putting a man in a timber-drying microwave oven to get information.

The script by Jane Goldman and director Matthew (STARDUST) Vaughn is sharp, witty and neatly subverts the whole superhero genre, but does so with charm and warmth.

Action, violence, bad language, off-colour humour and possibly the funniest use of the word 'bazooka' ever - what more could you possibly ask for in a film? Whatever it is, chances are that KICK ASS has it.

Simply put, KICK ASS is the front runner for our film of the year.

Trailer