Let's Talk About Movies: A Defense Of Kingsman's Flash Mob Of Death

Note - This article contains significant spoilers for Kingsman: The Secret Service, and to some extent assumes you have seen it. - End Note

Alo Party Peoples.

I mentioned in the review that Valentine was trying to kill most of humanity in a desperate attempt to stop global warming. He planned to achieve that by distributing SIM cards with free data to all, with a virus on board programmed to emit mind control rays that turn people into feral, bloodthirsty killing machines. In the process of uncovering this, Galahad ends up in a deliberate send-up of the Westboro Baptist Church where Valentine is testing his machine, compelling him, and to be fair everyone else there as well, to stab, shoot, bludgeon and otherwise massacre their way through about fifty racist, homophobic, and generally reprehensible redneck caricatures.

The scene channels Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill with it's bloody, surreal, visceral, comedic horror. It's amazing from a technical perspective, the cameraman becomes part of the choreography as they weave in and out between the combatants in one long unbroken slow-motion shot, it turns Colin Firth from a serious actor doing a silly action flick for an easy paycheck to a genuinely great action star, and yes, it was terrible how cathartic and exhilarating it felt to watch a bunch of Bible Belt bigots being bloodily beaten to death for about four minutes. I feel bad for liking this scene, I shouldn't be able to like this scene, I'm probably going to hell for liking this scene, but I did like it.

But the scene is utterly shameless, has no subtext what-so-ever, and you can see the screenplay bending over backwards to make it happen. They needed to have a scene that shows just how lethal the Kingsmen are in action, but that requires having one of our heroes brutally murder dozens of people while giving the audience permission to not hate themselves for enjoying it, and they took the easiest route possible. "Here's a bunch of people that we ALL hate being brutally beaten to death. Enjoy!"

I can already see people taking a film that is little more than You Only Live Twice by way of 21 Jump Street and turning it into a political talking point. Is it right-wing because the villain is an extreme environmentalist and our heroes are a bunch of blue-blooded aristocrats, or is it left-wing because our main hero is a hot-headed street tough showing those aristocrats that they are becoming obsolete in a changing world and saving it in the process? Is it in poor taste that the only one of Valentine's co-conspirators that we learn the party of is a Republican, or is it in worse taste that most of the Obama administration's heads explode during the climax?

Valentine is an environmentalist by coincidence, he's primarily an insane genocidal super-villain for our heroes to thwart. When the co-conspirator's heads are exploding it isn't a big dramatic set-piece, there is almost no blood and their heads go up in multi-colored mushroom clouds set to the Star Spangled Banner, its a joke, and a hilarious one. Even in the church scene I started this discussion with, it's made clear from the start that the combatants aren't in control of what they're doing and it being in a church isn't relevant to the plot, they just needed to show what the Kingsmen could do when they had nothing holding them back and how truly insane Valentine is.

I'd say that putting a political spin on this movie is like going to the Superbowl and complaining about the color of the uniforms. It doesn't matter what color the uniforms are, just watch the damn game! This isn't like White House Down where being a left-wing wish fulfillment fantasy is the point. What Kingsman exists to do, and largely succeeds at, is making a cheerful homage to golden-age James Bond. Are there some political jokes in the margins? Absolutely, but they're exactly that, and they aren't why the movie exists.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B