Kingsman:
The Secret Service is a fan boy’s wish list of a homage to the
Roger Moore Bond films. That’s the great thing about director Matthew Vaughn’s
latest (Kick Ass, X-Men: First Class, Layer Cake), but is also its biggest problem.
Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is a young man with plenty of
talent and potential, but is stuck in a rut, stealing cars for fun, spending
what money he has down the local boozer, and forced to put up with his thuggish
stepdad’s constant putdowns. After a run-in with the police, Eggsy is recruited
by Harry Hart (Colin Firth) to join international spy agency Kingsman, where
not only must he prove himself during training, he also has to survive it.
The performances in Kingsman
are all solid. Colin Firth steals the show as Harry Hart. He’s suave, delivers a
droll one-liner at a moment’s notice, and he’s deadly; the man can literally
kick ass. While a couple of set-pieces have clearly been tinkered by CGI, Firth
does the majority of his own fights. Firth, who rose to fame as Mr Darcy in the
BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, is just as
convincing and lethal as Daniel Craig’s Bond or Matt Damon’s Bourne. Samuel L
Jackson hams it up as the film’s megalomaniac villain, having plenty of fun
with his scenes. Valentine is text book Bond villain (including a secret
underground lair), but at least Jackson gives plenty of charisma and laughs. Mark
Strong gets something to do for once as Merlin, Kingsman’s answer to Q; not
just standing in a lab creating lethal new toys, Strong gets in on the action
as well. Sophie Cookson, as fellow recruit Roxy, gets a female supporting role
where she’s not just eye candy, she’s got the brains and able to knock someone
out just as well as the boys, the only problem is the film’s climax, where
Cookson is literally moved out the way (Earth’s upper atmosphere – you can’t
get further away!) so that Egerton can take the glory.
As for Egerton, you can’t argue that he’s got the personality
to hold the film together, it’s just a shame that Eggsy has been written as a
massive Daily Mail stereotype: baseball cap, hoodie, trainers, lives in a dingy
London flat with his cockney tart mum (Eastenders’
Samantha Womack), and steals things because he’s bored, Eggsy is Britain’s
middle class view of working class youth. Young people in this country are more
complicated than that and Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman (admittedly adapting
Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel) took the easy way out when they
came up with Eggsy.
As you would expect from the director of Kick Ass, Kingsman’s violence is over-the-top splatter. Some critics have
described the gore as stomach-turning, but its larger-than-life, realism be
damned gore, much like Tarantino’s Kill
Bill instead of the projectile vomit inducing antics of Eli Roth’s Hostel. Kingsman’s stand out scene is what appears to be one solid take as
Firth wipes out the congregation of a racist, homophobic – everything ending in
‘ist’ or ‘ic’ – church, easily rivalling the ballet style choreography of
Gareth Evans’ Raid films.
Vaughn gives us a faithful recreation of the larger than
life spy films that were the norm before The
Bourne Identity and Casino Royale
ruined the party, whilst also coming up with a few of its own ideas (the
world’s population massacring each other to the soundtrack of KC and the
Sunshine Band’s Give It Up). The trouble is, because Kingsman rigidly sticks to the formula we all know and love, there
are no surprises, and even the script’s shock twists were done before in Bond
films from years back. You have the gadgets, cars, girls, double-crossings, the
henchwoman with razor sharp blades for legs, explosions, innuendos - everything you could want from a trip down memory
lane, and Kingsman is a hell of a lot
of fun, but it doesn’t have quite enough that’s new or never-saw-that-coming to
make it something you definitely need to go and watch.
3 out of 5
Matt
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