The action-packed tale of Kick-Ass, about a high-school geek turned modern-day celebrity-superhero, is a perfect blend of all the right elements for today’s bloodthirsty audiences and classic comic book fans alike.

Lionsgate Films and writer/director Matthew Vaughn have refined all the essential elements of the successful comic book series written by Mark Millar and artist John Romita Jr., and combined them with hipster synthesized, electronic rock and a good dose of Quentin Tarantino-style violence to create an edgier, more believable superhero for the modern movie-going audience. The result is pure movie genius and the birth of a new genre of vigilante.

Unlike the well known, silver-screen superheroes of late such as Peter Parker (Spiderman) and Bruce Wayne (Batman), the main character in Kick-Ass, a high school nerd Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), has a major disadvantage in his burgeoning career as a superhero: he has no superpowers.

Inspired by the comic book heroes that he and his two buddies love so much, Lizewski decides that it’s time that someone stands up to the bullies in his neighborhood and becomes a self-styled neo-hero named Kick-Ass by donning a brightly colored, futuristic looking wet-suit, steel-toed work boots and a pair of yellow kitchen gloves.

He suffers a near-death experience in his first crime-fighting spree that leaves him with titanium plating in his body and damaged nerve endings that allow him to endure copious amounts of pain. This new ability to take a serious ass-whooping is the beginning of his genesis toward true superhero status.

Patrolling the streets one evening he accidentally becomes involved in a gang-related street fight and defends a man from being beaten to death. When a witness films the incident on a cell phone and posts it on the Internet, Kick-Ass becomes an instant web sensation with over 20,000,000 views of the clip in a matter of days.

That’s when things really start to heat up for Lizewski. His personal life kicks into high gear when the girl of his dreams decides to befriend him on the false pretense that he’s gay and the city’s mob boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong) begins a hunt to find and kill him. Later, Lizewski is joined in his vigilante efforts by a twisted ex-cop gone rogue (Nicholas Cage) and his lethally precocious 11 year-old daughter (Chloe Moretz) as the crime-fighting duo Big Daddy and Hit Girl.

In true comic book fashion an arch-nemesis develops in the form of his over-privileged classmate Chris D’Amico, (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) son of the vicious mob boss, who leads Kick-Ass into a trap more deadly and real than Lizewski bargained for.

As a hero, Kick Ass answers the yearning heart of every comic book fan that has ever felt the pain of knowing that he could never be a superhero for lack of a radiated spider-bite or a bottomless pit of high-tech gadgetry.

Although the trailer for Kick-Ass features the 11 year-old potty-mouth that plays Hit Girl bouncing around the room dropping one-liners like bread crumbs, the blood-spattered scenes of vigilante-style justice are certainly not for anyone of that age. The liberal violence is more along the lines of Quentin Tarantino than of Spiderman.

Kick-Ass is the next step in the evolution of the idea of the American superhero. Since the 1950’s when Batman and Robin pranced around the room “Socking” and “Boffing” henchmen and speaking in staccato one-liners to the caped Superman of the 1980’s with shiny, red-leather boots, superheroes have become progressively less flamboyant.

Audiences have become more conditioned to violence, and less likely to accept outlandish story lines with heroes (and villains) that look like something out of a cross-dressing handbook, or a Lady GaGa video.

Even the recent series of Batman movies has become centered on a more gymnastically inclined vigilante that actually draws blood from his evil-doing counterparts. The Ironman series has likewise taken the ideal hero into a realm of high-tech gadgetry and more realistic terrorist villains.

Kick-Ass simply takes the idea of the hero to the next evolutionary step, where bravery and fatality take their rightful place in the modern-day battle of good versus evil, trumping superpowers and unconsciousness.

Kick-Ass will definitely appeal to today’s audiences that demand instant gratification. The ending leaves the storyline wide open for a sequel, and we can be sure that we’ll be seeing more Kick-Ass action in the very near future.