Kingsman: The Secret Service
Directed by Matthew Vaughn.
Starring Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Mark Hamill and Michael Caine. 129 mins.
Kingsman sees Matthew Vaughn revisting the transgressive, violent comedy of his best film Kick Ass, and mixing it with the smooth 60s spy movie pastiche of his second best film X-Men First Class. Kick Ass was a horrible affront to human decency with its 11 year old assassin Hit Girl dismembering and slaughtering all in her path, but it had, in its own odd way, a heart. It's is one of my favourites, but you pay a price for liking it, confront a few uncomfortable truths about what you'll tolerate in the name of entertainment. The fun in Kingsman doesn't cost anything. People are sliced in half and Firth sticks an axe in a middle aged woman's head and it barely resonate at all because the satire and the characterisation are all so two dimensional that they are just paper cuts.
Kingsman is an impossibly snobbish and elitist secret organisation that is as much Knights Templar as Man From U.N.C.L.E or Connery era British Intelligence. When an agent dies investigating the kidnapping of a prominent scientist (Hamill, resembling Timothy Spall) a member of the underclass called Eggsy (Egerton), a chav don't you know, is put forward for membership – though only because his dad had been a member. From there he has to go through a rigorous training programme against a number of other applicants, before joining the struggle with super villain Richmond Valentine (Jackson.)
The best thing about it is that unlike most modern movies it peaks in the third act. The movie has three cherishable moments, good enough on their own to make it worth seeing, all of which happen in the last 45 minutes and won't be revealed or hinted at here. It does though take an age to get going and all the business of setting up the premise and then the whole super spy X-Factor sequence is surprisingly limp. There are smart bits – it gets round the inappropriateness of Fleming's habit of having the baddy be handicapped by giving Valentine an amputee henchlady with Oscar Pistorius style Blade Runner prosthetic that double as lethal weapons; the devilish, morally ambiguous nature of Valentine plot, once it is revealed, is genuinely provactive. This boldness doesn't extend to the rest of the film though. There are some dumb choices, like having Jackson's villain speak with a lisp. Some of the early action sequences aren't as crisp as they should be and in places the budget doesn't seem to match the ambition. Everything is too thin, too caricature, too flip.
.
Kick Ass week of release review
X-Men: First Class week of release review
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Directed by Matthew Vaughn.
Starring Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Mark Hamill and Michael Caine. 129 mins.
Kingsman sees Matthew Vaughn revisting the transgressive, violent comedy of his best film Kick Ass, and mixing it with the smooth 60s spy movie pastiche of his second best film X-Men First Class. Kick Ass was a horrible affront to human decency with its 11 year old assassin Hit Girl dismembering and slaughtering all in her path, but it had, in its own odd way, a heart. It's is one of my favourites, but you pay a price for liking it, confront a few uncomfortable truths about what you'll tolerate in the name of entertainment. The fun in Kingsman doesn't cost anything. People are sliced in half and Firth sticks an axe in a middle aged woman's head and it barely resonate at all because the satire and the characterisation are all so two dimensional that they are just paper cuts.
Kingsman is an impossibly snobbish and elitist secret organisation that is as much Knights Templar as Man From U.N.C.L.E or Connery era British Intelligence. When an agent dies investigating the kidnapping of a prominent scientist (Hamill, resembling Timothy Spall) a member of the underclass called Eggsy (Egerton), a chav don't you know, is put forward for membership – though only because his dad had been a member. From there he has to go through a rigorous training programme against a number of other applicants, before joining the struggle with super villain Richmond Valentine (Jackson.)
The best thing about it is that unlike most modern movies it peaks in the third act. The movie has three cherishable moments, good enough on their own to make it worth seeing, all of which happen in the last 45 minutes and won't be revealed or hinted at here. It does though take an age to get going and all the business of setting up the premise and then the whole super spy X-Factor sequence is surprisingly limp. There are smart bits – it gets round the inappropriateness of Fleming's habit of having the baddy be handicapped by giving Valentine an amputee henchlady with Oscar Pistorius style Blade Runner prosthetic that double as lethal weapons; the devilish, morally ambiguous nature of Valentine plot, once it is revealed, is genuinely provactive. This boldness doesn't extend to the rest of the film though. There are some dumb choices, like having Jackson's villain speak with a lisp. Some of the early action sequences aren't as crisp as they should be and in places the budget doesn't seem to match the ambition. Everything is too thin, too caricature, too flip.
.
Kick Ass week of release review
X-Men: First Class week of release review
