Anticipated with fairly equal amounts of eagerness and dread, Kick-Ass is the latest adaptation of a Mark Millar comic, following on from the Angelina Jolie/James McAvoy-starring Wanted. Although it goes without saying that it manages to improve on that execrable waste of celluloid, it’s a pleasure to report that Kick-Ass is a genuinely great film. Much of the credit has to go to Stardust/Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn (to this day still most often referred to as Lock, Stock… producer), who has not only done a smart, stylish job of directing, but delivered a witty script with co-writer Jane Goldman (who you’re probably aware by now is Jonathan Ross’ wife, but deserves to be known for much more than that) and, realising that something this profane and violent would never be funded by a Hollywood studio, also played a major role in the financing process.

Taking the premise that, with superheroes being so popular, why aren’t there more people trying to be them, Kick-Ass follows New York nerd Dave Lizewski (played like a surprising amount of the cast by a Brit – Nowhere Boy’s Aaron Johnson) who, tired with a world where villainy goes unpunished and where a guy like him will never end up with a hot girl, decides that it’s time someone made a stand. Thanks to a modified wetsuit ordered off the internet, some cheap martial arts equipment and a lack of shame and embarrassment, Dave becomes Kick-Ass, crime-fighting avenger and becomes a media sensation. And then finds himself getting in over his head, becoming the target of vicious crime boss Frank D’Amico, his supervillain-wannabe son Chris and dysfunctional father-daughter crime fighting duo Damon and Mindy McReady aka Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Which is where the aforementioned dread comes in – the presence of a violent, foul mouthed eleven year old girl was more than some publications (cough… The Daily Mail… cough) could take, which is a shame as she’s an incredible, unique character. Despite Kick Ass’ impressive action sequences, all featuring punishing stunts, big guns and score that is suitably… well, kick ass, what really makes the film so entertaining are its well-drawn characters.

Kick-Ass is also notable for managing to take an essentially misanthropic, cynical view of society, and creating something goofily joyful from it – although Vaughn and Goldman stay relatively close to Millar’s original comic, they do smooth out some of its crueller edges. While many recent comic book adaptations have tried to go ‘dark’, taking a serious look at how a superhero would act in the real world, theorising that they would be lonely borderline-sociopaths (Christopher Nolan’s version of Batman), or oedipal wrecks (Ang Lee’s Hulk), Kick-Ass cuts through all the self-importance and presents a much more believable hypothesis, where the heroes are kids out for a thrill or driven by their hormones, or in the case of the adults, just mentally-ill (an idea already raised in Alan Moore’s Watchmen, which didn’t transfer to the screen quite as successfully).

If there are faults to be found with the film, and they really would be minor ones, it could be said that the over-reliance on voice over at the start slows down the pace of the film a little, and the barmy Adam West impersonation Nicholas Cage gives when in his Big Daddy guise is a bit love it or hate it. But really Kick-Ass is one of the greatest examples of a superhero movie and essentially renders everything that follows it within the genre redundant (hopefully with the exception of Kick-Ass 2, as the film leaves itself wide open for a well-deserved sequel).