Kingsman: The Secret Service
"Kingsman: The Secret Service" is the re-teaming of director Matthew Vaughn and comic writer Mark Millar, the masterminds behind the 2010 hit "Kick-Ass." Vaughn is also responsible for "Stardust," "X-Men: First Class" and the crime drama "Layer Cake," and Millar for his "Millarworld" line of comic books that boast "high-concept" stories and studio contracts signed before the first issues hit stands.
Together, they are a potent creative force, setting up shop in their favorite PG-13 genres and trying to tear the walls down. "Kingsman" takes on the classic 007 archetypes, from classy suits to crazy gadgets, stark violence to sexy girls. It's largely a success, thanks to a strong cast and superb direction from Vaughn, but in the end gets a little lost in its own excess.
Classiness, as defined by "Kingsman," is synonymous with taste, erudition and a well-fitted suit. Harry Hart (Colin Firth) exemplifies this. He plays the best not-Bond Bond in, well, probably forever. A majority of the film is Hart mentoring Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a rough kid with a heart of gold whose father was formerly Hart's protege. Hart brings Eggsy into the Kingsman fold, explaining that the organization has operated outside of government jurisdiction for much of history as a cadre of superhero super-spy super-gentlemen. "A gentleman appears in the paper three times," Harry explains. "When he's born, when he marries and when he dies."
When Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), an Elon Musk-style billionaire, shows up with designs on "saving the planet" (we know what he really wants), it's up to Eggsy, Harry and the Kingsmen to stop him. Admit it: You've always wondered what it would be like to see Samuel L. Jackson play a Bond villain. Like Firth, he's playing a role most people had already fantasy-cast him into at some point or another, and he's great, complete with a weirdly affecting lisp and an aversion to violence and blood.
As an action film, "Kingsman" delivers plenty. Although some scenes are clearly CGI (and a little dizzying, honestly), Firth's major set-piece is reportedly all him on set, and it's a doozy. The scene takes place in a white supremacist church, and most of them end up on the receiving end of the violence. Setting an action scene there is, in Millar's fashion, extraordinarily simplistic but very loud political commentary, like a 13-year-old boy writing half-researched blogs on the Internet. In fact, that's also the best description for Vaughn's direction of the action scenes, full of blood and hyper-violence to the point of being desensitizing. Keep in mind, I'm not slamming "Kingsman"; I think Vaughn and Millar's lack of subtlety, when it comes to violence and commentary, is particularly entertaining to watch.
That said, the film falls flat on its face in the last five minutes, largely due to that same lack of subtlety. Most of the movie is about Eggsy, ruffian that he is, learning the ropes of being a gentleman spy. During the last raid on Valentine's compound, he runs into an imprisoned princess. Suddenly he has all the focus of a sexually aroused little boy, and as he runs off to save the world, she offers him anal sex in broken English should he save the world. The scene is both glaringly out of character for Eggsy and out of character for a movie so honed in on the idea of what a "gentleman spy" must be. It forgets that the often- (and oddly) chaste sex in a Bond film maintains a sense of innocence. The generally unseen, only hinted-at nature of sex in a Bond film makes it, well, something sexy (no matter how many double-entendres and juvenile jokes it makes). It's like the same 13-year old boy I mentioned earlier got a little randy and decided to self-insert himself getting some into his script.
Keep in mind: The only reason I really disliked that final joke is that it feels so dissonant from the rest of "Kingsman." Most of the film is an otherwise well-written, well-directed action flick that picks and chooses from Bond's best moments. It's violent without being meanspirited and Firth is an absolute joy to watch as he enters what will hopefully be a gray-haired action-star phase. Aside from the last scene, "Kingsman: The Secret Service" is a must-see movie, and in February, that's quite a movie to be.