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| Directed by Matthew Vaughn Written by Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman |
When trailers for Kingsman: The Secret Service started popping up, I thought I had it figured out. It looked like a YA-esque boarding school drama set at a spy training school being released as a mid-November distraction before prestige season got started, probably not good, but also probably harmless. Then it was pushed back to February and I started to get worried about it, especially when it was set to go up against likely juggernaut Fifty Shades of Grey. Then the professionals were strangely silent about it, the result of a press embargo, which usually might as well be a flashing red sign that reads STAY AWAY.
I could not have been more wrong in my assumptions, because Kingsman is really good. It's a shame that Fox has been more or less hiding it behind Twilight porn fanfiction, because Kingsman is a wonderful time at the movies that takes its influences of golden age James Bond, modern spy-thrillers, and urban youth culture, and mixes them all into a fantastic action-comedy that ends up being what The Interview aspired to be but couldn't quite make it.
Our story involves Taron Egerton as Gary 'Eggsy' Unwin, a young British street tough that gets arrested for stealing a car from the leader of a rival gang. He gets bailed out by Colin Firth as Harry 'Galahad' Hart, who tells him that his late father was a field agent for a top secret intelligence agency called the Kingsmen, and now he needs Eggsy to replace a recently fallen agent. For a moment it looks like it will become "Jimmy Bond" by focusing on a competition between Eggsy and a bunch of high-bred snobs to become a Kingsman, but it soon becomes more about thwarting Samuel L. Jackson as Richmond Valentine, a caricature of any number of rags-to-riches rappers with a plan to use his cellphone data empire to wipe out most of humanity in a desperate attempt to stop global warming.
It's incredibly over-the-top, but director Matthew Vaughn is more than game for this material. He already did golden-age spy flicks with X-Men: First Class, he's done over-the-top action comedy from a Mark Millar comic before with Kick-Ass, and he combines them here to make something kind of amazing. It's shot and edited wonderfully, the choreography is great, and he keeps finding inventive ways to spoof various parts of the spy genre. For example, Algerian dancer Sofia Boutella makes her big screen debut as Valentine's lead hench-woman, a ninja with prosthetic sword legs. Let me repeat that. A ninja, with prosthetic sword legs. Is this woman a good actress? I'm not entirely sure, but she's perfectly cast for this part, and she looks great in action scenes.
Those action scenes are also where Kingsman finds much of its humor as it moves from gleefully exaggerated, darkly hilarious and bloody Tarantino-esque brawl to another. There is one scene in particular, which I won't dare spoil, that plays out like a cathartic ultra-violent flash mob of death that I thought was amazing and will almost certainly be one of the year's most talked about moments in film.
Kingsman: The Secret Service was a pleasant surprise for me, and a prime example of why one shouldn't judge a book by its cover. When did we start getting good movies in February, because I don't want it to stop.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
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