Kick-Ass 2, directed by Jeff Wadlow, is a bloody, violent and fun extension of 2010’s Kick-Ass. It's been three years since this crowd of superhero wannabes and inspired do-gooders hit the screens for the first time in Kick-Ass, leaving us with the feeling that anything is possible, and that brute force is indeed secondary to fearlessness.

In Kick-Ass 2, we pick up right where we left off in the first movie. Mindy "Hit-Girl" Macready (Chloe Moretz) is an orphan after losing "Big Daddy" to the hoodlums of New York City villain number one: multimillionaire mob boss d'Amico. And she and Dave "Kick-Ass" Lizevski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are trying to lead normal teenage high-school lives. The problem is that evil seems to arise from the ashes of the d'Amico pyre, and Hit-Girl's crime-fighting upbringing can’t be ignored. Although there are no "real" superheroes around, only inspired wannabes, there is nothing normal about these characters.

When Mindy tries to escape her vigilante destiny and find the teenage girl behind the purple kevlar/latex suit, it's like trying to stop a fired bullet on its course. Chris d'Amico, (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) teenage billionaire son of the mob boss, formerly “Red Mist,” accidentally kills his mother while she is sun tanning at home. He becomes just about as evil and dimwitted as a high-school kid can be. He decides to kill Kick-Ass and every other masked vigilante – and there are quite a few these days – in New York City once and for all. This time he calls himself The Motherfucker and raises a makeshift evil army, with some really violent, nasty supervillain characters at his side, including “Mother Russia,” “The Tumor” and “Genghis Carnage.”

Despite the bloody turn of events in the first film, Kick-Ass returns more motivated than ever, and tries to lead teenage Mindy back into her role as Hit-Girl. Although Kick-Ass himself is less of an easy target and more of a fighter this time around, he has miles and miles to go before equaling the toughness of his younger, purple colleague.

New masked talents team up with Kick-Ass to protect the streets and make the world a better place in this sequel. Jim Carrey makes an ironically funny, overly violent, badass “Colonel Stars and Stripes,” and Donald Faison, best known for TV’s Scrubs, is a very cute, don't-quit-your-day-job “Dr. Gravity.” The superhero names the vigilantes take on are a constant source of fun in Kick-Ass 2 (see “Night Bitch,” “Insect Man” and “Ass-Kicker.”)

Shortly before the premiere of the film Carrey publicly announced that he regretted playing the role of “Colonel Stars and Stripes” due to the violent nature of the film. The truth is that this movie is even more gory than the first: the body count is higher, there are highway car-chase scenes where human flesh covers the pavement, lawnmowers cut into police cars and their officers and big knives pierce feet and chests left and right.

While the extreme violent persists, there is actually a lot more emotional involvement in this sequel than there was in the original film. The motivation for Kick-Ass comes from a more realistic source as we get a closer look at who our favorite characters are behind the masks. We get to see them in their troublesome, chaotic and normal teenage lives. This is what makes the story brilliant.

Kick-Ass 2 is more action-packed and, above all, funnier than the first movie. However, the film is also a lot more R-rated: it is not for the faint at heart and requires a certain sense of humor to enjoy.

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