Kingsman: The Secret Service

Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Taron Egerton
Length: 129 minutes
Country: UK

It’s impossible not to draw comparisons to its near-sibling Kick-Ass thanks to its shared production credits and creative team, as Matthew Vaughn has once again produced an independent passion project of budgetary restraint without rule and smuggled it into theatres via studio distribution. He has made the film that he wanted too… and it’s kind of bonkers. A stylish action spy film in the vein of Bond (although owing more than enough to The Avengers), the story depicts veteran secret agent Harry Hart (Firth) as he takes ‘youff’ Gary “Eggsy” Unwin under his wing and introduces him into a world of espionage.

The performances are chiefly great. Firth is having a ball, Jackson’s villain hams just the right amount to avoid irritation and Sofia Boutella as the augmented henchwoman Gazelle is a visual marvel, while newcomer Egerton is fantastically likable in the leading role. It’s a shame that many of the other side characters (Strong, Hamill, Cookson ) fall into obscurity without enough flesh on their bones to standout beyond support, in particular Caine whose main job is sitting and explaining the plot. The film follows a fairly traditional formula, and unfortunately a majority of the film is dominated by the training stages of Eggsy’s recruitment, and not enough on the depiction of the agents themselves – due to this the film moves sluggishly outside of its structured set-pieces. As Jackson’s plot (and to that extent the films) unfurls, Kingsman descends into one of the more joyfully frenzied third acts that you’re likely to experience this year. Topped off with a fight sequence accompanied by KC & The Sunshine Band and a spectacular fireworks display, it’s where the film really decides to go for broke with its warped angle and races for the climax.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a film that will linger in the mind for many different reasons. It’s controversial, loud, fanciful and a little cruel, but it’s all in the name of amusement.

It can’t help but be argued that Vaughn has in fact already made his own Bond film in the form of X-Men: First Class – an international adventure tale of throwback influences harking back to 60s filmmaking techniques. While Vaughn has a keen comic eye, the action sequences are shot is such a hyperkinetic manner that it’s difficult to spatially register what’s going on, while Goldman’s cineliterate screenplay careens relentlessly.

There is a classicist approach towards this kind of genre that suits the internal world better. Not just via its aesthetics but by its treatment of the material that it is working from. Millar’s anarchic methods of writing have always been controversial at the best of times, less able to balance the tonally bleak from the black. Where Kick-Ass exorcised many of these shifts in favour of a more cohesive ambiance and genre meditation, Kingsman runs at the spy model with little ambition towards subtlety or vast commentary. It is not that the film is intellectually dead, but rather that it chooses not to assert itself in any unique way outside of its established tropes and its determination to pronounce its disparity from the genre (“This isn’t that kind of movie”). The satire of celebrities, technology and social hierarchy are all there, but soft in application. This is a broadly comic send-up film with many laughs aimed towards the lunacy of Bond’s former world, mainly at their expense.

Adolescent gaudiness is the order of the day, and the film pulls no punches. Foul language, blood and vomit are all present and accounted for, and a tone-deaf anal sex gag that takes even the most cringe-worthy of Bond puns to the nth degree. This is an unbelievably bloodthirsty picture of shock factor violence tactics, notably a jaw dropping massacre scene in a church that will divide even the most confident of viewers. Kick-Ass’s use of violence was contextual towards the cruel realities of its world, but here there is less to work with, and so the bloodshed is a means to an end – and that end is about having fun.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a film that will linger in the mind for many different reasons. It’s controversial, loud, fanciful and a little cruel, but it’s all in the name of amusement. This is not a film for everyone, but for those who can stomach some of its denser elements there are certainly worse ways to spend an evening.

Image Source: 20th Century Fox