Should You Spy Out A Screening of ‘Kingsman’?
The team that brought us the movie version of Kick-Ass is back with Kingsman: The Secret Service. Did they once again kick ass?
Matthew Vaughn is back as the director of a movie based on a comic series written by Mark Millar, as was the case in the hit movie Kick-Ass. In this case the comics were called The Secret Service, and the details of plot and character are different, while the general structure of the plot is the same. I will try to describe what works and the few things that don’t, without giving anything away beyond what can be seen in the trailers.
The basic story, as can be pieced together from the trailer, is that a troubled young man, Gary, called Eggsy, (Taron Egerton) gets recruited by a very well-tailored man (Colin Firth) to be one of the candidates for an opening in an independent international spy agency. Insane testing and training ensues, while a high-tech madman, played by a lisping Samuel L. Jackson, plots evil upon the world.
Similar to the movie Kick-Ass, the action in Kingsman is insane. Unlike the previous film, the action is choreographed like a Jason Bourne fight scene on crack. Or, perhaps more accurately, like the fights in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in how body-slammingly brutal the hits and throws are, and how fast the hand-to-hand combat is. A perusal of IMDB.com doesn’t show any overlap between the fight choreography teams on Kingsman and The Winter Soldier, but that will give you a sense of the intensity of the action.
A big part of the movie is the humor, bringing a sense of fun and just a touch of camp to the super-spy milieu that has been missing since the Bourne movies. Thankfully it isn’t nearly as campy as the Roger Moore James Bond movies and one of the big pluses to the movie is that it turns a couple of spy film tropes on their heads. Alas, one of the big weaknesses is that it doesn’t invert all the Bond-like tropes and that leads to some frustrating moments near the end, with pacing issues that had been kicked aside earlier in the film. In fact, the movie is mostly clever enough that even when it telegraphs what should be some surprises, I still found myself eager to see how they pulled it off.
The cast is outstanding for the most part, with the exception of one of the Kingsman candidates who is the primary competition for the main character. His portrayal is cliched elitist snob. Colin Firth, as the nattily dressed senior Kingsman, is particularly well-suited (pun intended) as a smooth, expensive whisky-drinking super bad-ass. And right out of the gate is a surprise casting choice that initially I thought would be a problem, but very quickly grew on me — I won’t spoil it for you, it’s that fun.
The movie is rated R, mainly for the violence and language, although surprisingly for this creative team there are no pre-teen girls dropping the “c” word. There is almost no nudity at all in the film, but when it does happen it is so out of left field and surprising in what it shows that it seems out of place — and that is something I never thought I would write. It also is completely inappropriate for the 10-12 year old unaccompanied boys I saw leaving the movie after it ended.
With the exception of a few minor problems with casting and pacing, I found Kingsman: The Secret Service to be a fun, exciting, funny movie. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
