The Dark Knight? Not Exactly...

A lot of good movies are comics first...

Geez, it took me forever to finally get around to seeing the latest caped crusader flick. Except here, the star of the show's namesake doesn't wear a cape, apparently taking a page from Edna Mode's notebook. It's a tough one to narrow down, and looking at the taglines at IMDB.com, it was hard to narrow down there too: action, comedy, crime, drama, thriller...

It's a fun movie, it doesn't take itself too seriously, yet there are moments that are very serious. For the most part it is tongue-in-cheek while paying some seriously subtle homages to long-standing comic heroes; Spider-Man, Batman, and the like. The one-liners are delivered with effectual timing and feeling, and the overall dialogue as a whole was spot-on. Typing this, in hindsight, the dialogue was incredibly well done and ends up being very believable.

This world doesn't have "real" superheroes with actual super powers, but it does have those who are willing to don a mask and do their part. Along with the main character we have a small handful of others doing their part, and the youngest of the bunch, Hit-Girl really steals the show. This pint-sized powerhouse slices and dices her way through witty banter that would make a sailor blush, and action sequences that would make John Woo proud.

And in the "never thought I'd say this" department, Nicolas Cage does an excellent job as Big Daddy, the ex-cop turned crime fighter with an arsenal to make Frank Castle jealous. As a civilian, Cage plays a regular, albeit quirky father, but in the mask, Cage goes into total Adam West mode, and it's not shtick, he dons the mantle seriously.

I've gone on about the characters, but really, that's what the movie is about. That sounds obvious, but it's not the special effects, or the fight scenes (which rock), but it's the people in and out of costume that you get invested in. The story has some predictable moments, but at the same time it also some pretty surprising ones. It has a harsh grit to it, one I would compare to something like Sin City actually. It's in this unabashed brutality, for lack of a better word, that the humor, story, characters, and dialogue are juxtaposed against.

Just like all of those tags on IMDB, I can't really give one reason to see this movie. There are several reasons to go see it. If you think from the trailers and ad spots it's just a funny movie about high school kids being supers, it's not. It's also not a completely dark world like the current Gotham incarnations. It is, however, a superhero flick worth seeing.