In Machete by Robert Rodriguez Steven Seagal and Danny Trejo faceoff one on one for the third time now. Seeing them together in the trailer made me realize one thing; that the tables have turned. Trejo now stars while he has been a busy supporting character for over more than 20 years while Seagal is only playing a supporting character when he normally is the subject of his movies. The contrast between Trejo and Seagal is like black and white in terms of their career. Trejo has a regular career of steadily climbing the ladders of success in Hollywood. Starting out small and now having top-billing in a theatrical movie. Seagal on the other hand had a career that was launched. A big time producer saw his skills and decided this was the new action hero and gave him the role of Nico Toscani in Above The Law (a.k.a. Nico). From day one Seagal's name was above the movie titles he starred in.

Now Seagal is kind of unique as he really was a nobody before this first movie and had absolutely no other screen credits but he isn't the only one to have a career that was launched. But he was one of the few who actually succeeded to have success and maintain on top. Most of the time when a movie-career is launched for somebody it's a person who has been famous in another profession like sports, music or acting in a TV-show.
Here are a few examples of careers that were launched with great exposure but which failed to take off.

The final Star Trek movie before the reboot of J.J. Abrams and the question is will the adventures of the next generation go out on a high note, like the original cast did in The Undiscovered Country or will it turn out to be a dud? Unfortunately the latter is the case here as this movie had not only me dozing off at certain moments but also a friend with whom I watched the whole series with. We both have 40 hour workweeks but what are the odds of not only me but two people actually having a difficult time in keeping their eyes open? At one point he suggested to turn the movie off and watch the last half 40 minutes later that week. My response was to just let it run. So 70 minutes into the movie the discussion became whether we wanted to postpone the torment or just get it over with.

Cancer as a plot device. Enough dramas that consist of it, but action movies? No they only use diseases as a threat like threatening to inject someone with a virus like HIV or some guy that has to keep his adrenaline level height because otherwise his heart will stop or something like that. But in Desperate Measures cancer is actually a plot device as some sick kid, whose father is a cop, needs a bone-marrow transplant quickly or else he will die. And it just so happens the only compatible donor is a sociopath killer locked up in solitary confinement who actually agrees with the operation. And of course this violent mad man escapes before he can go into surgery resulting in cat and mouse game in which the mouse mustn't be killed by the cat or else the kitten will die too.

Whether you will like Kick-Ass seems to come down to one question: are you offended by an 11-year old girl being trained as an assassin, spouting out naughty words while killing loads of people in a variety of creative ways and taking a beating or a bullet to the chest at certain times? If the answer is "no" than Kick-Ass could be just your thing. However, if the answer is "yes" and you are not willing to look any further than Kick-Ass is not for you which is a shame as you're missing out on something with this funny movie that parodies and homages the superhero genre at the same time, while being a solid scripted story on its own.