One
complaint that has always dogged the James Bond franchise over the years is the
inescapable fact that while the films seem to be loaded with gratuitous sex and
violence in theory, they never quite manage to show them in any great detail.
Obviously, the decision to imply more than display has served the producers for
more than a half-century, but can you imagine what it would be like if a Bond
film were to include all the seamier elements that they have only hinted at in
the past? The early word on the over-the-top action-comedy
“Kingsman: The Secret Service” seemed to suggest that it would pay
homage to the Bond films of old—the ones made before the series took its turn
towards the comparatively serious with the arrival of Daniel Craig—while
including all the Good Parts that had been largely absent in the past. Alas, it
seems to have taken its inspiration from one of the lesser Roger Moore efforts
than the classic Connerys and the result is a fitfully amusing but increasing
tedious and occasionally appalling mess that plays like “The Man with the
Golden Gun” with ridiculous amounts of gore and severed limbs on display,
though the nipples this time around are not so much superfluous as they are
distressingly nonexistent.
Based on
the comic book from Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, “Kingsman” posits a
top secret British espionage group that is inspired by King Arthur and his
knights (whose names the members appropriate for their code names), based in a
seemingly ordinary Savile Row tailor shop and regularly saves the world without
getting into all the political mumbo-jumbo that has affected the efforts of
governmental spy organizations. Having lost their Lancelot after a one-man
effort to rescue a kidnapped scientist (Mark Hamill), the
group begins the process of recruiting a replacement and for his nominee, agent
Harry “Galahad” Hart (Colin Firth) puts up Gary “Eggsy”
Unwin (Taron Egerton), a seemingly ordinary young punk who lives with his
mother and her abusive boyfriend and spends his days getting into dumb trouble.
However, Eggsy is also the son of a former Kingsman who gave his life to save
Harry and others when he was just a child.
Not surprisingly,
Eggsy seems out of place among the far more sophisticated other
candidates—only Roxy (Sophie Cookson) shows him any kindness or respect—and
Kingsman leader Arthur (Michael Caine) expects him to wash out quickly. Also
not surprisingly, Eggsy manages to last throughout the extended testing process
designed to winnow the group down to one under the eye of Merlin (Mark Strong).
This turns out to be slightly more intense than, say, the executive training
program at Bloomingdales—their barracks are quickly flooded while they sleep
one night, there is a group skydive where they are informed that one of them is
not packing a chute only after they make the jump and they are each given a
puppy to raise and train. (Eggsy names his pug “JB” and in one of the
films funnier jokes, we realize just how many fictional super-spies have shared
those initials over the years.)
While all
of this is going on, there is, of course, a diabolical plan with global
implications being hatched by a megalomaniacal madman. Our super-villain is
Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), an astoundingly wealthy technological pioneer
whose frustration at his inability to save the planet through the usual
channels has led him to a more sinister approach that involves zapping the
minds of the world’s population via their cell phones and driving them to kill
each other off. Not everyone is to be killed of course and he has also been
recruiting or kidnapping celebrities and other dignitaries so that they can
help to forge a better world once the riffraff is gone. If you need any further
proof that Valentine is mad, consider that he snatches Iggy Azalea but
evidently does nothing for Charli XCX even though it was her awesome chorus on
“Fancy” that made that song the hit that it was.
It sounds
fun in theory, I guess, and there are some entertaining moments of rude
irreverence here and there but the giddiness gets a bit tedious after a while.
The screenplay by director Matthew Vaughn and longtime collaborator Jane
Goldman is kind of like the espionage equivalent of “Scream”—all the
characters have seen all the James Bond movies and make frequent reference to
their clichés. However, since the Bond movies were
never famous for taking themselves seriously, what we have in “Kingsman”
is a film making cartoonish jokes about films that were often cartoonish
jokes.
Another
thing that I found off-putting about “Kingsman,” oddly enough, is
that it is really, really violent. This may sound like a contradiction of my
previously stated desire for a more overtly violent Bond film but Vaughn—whose
previous credits include “Kick-Ass,” another savagely brutal adaptation
of a Mark Millar comic book—floods the screen with flying limbs and spurting
blood throughout, and, while it is all done in a deliberately cartoonish and
nihilistic manner, it is still way too much of a not-that-great thing.
On the
other hand, the scene in which Valentine tests his weapon on a church
congregation styled after those Westboro Baptist creeps is really
grotesque—the idea of hateful monsters literally destroying each other, to the
soundtrack strains of “Free Bird,” no less, sounds funny but it goes
on for so long and is so brutal (including spearings, shootings and an ax to
the throat) that the joke is lost. Meanwhile, the sex is oddly non-existent
other than a not-particularly-amusing bit involving a kidnapped Swedish
princess offering particular sexual favors to Eggsy in exchange for saving the
world and then—Spoiler Alert—making good on her promise.
“Kingsman:
The Secret Service” is not without its compensations. While Egerton is
fairly anonymous as the callow would-be Kingsman, Firth, Caine and Strong are
clearly having fun with their parts and it is amusing to see Firth dressed to
look like Harry Palmer, the rival Sixties-era British spy once played by Caine.
(Jackson, on the other hand, is not quite as successful as the wildly lisping
villain—since the character does not make very much sense, he never quite
manages to get a fix on him.) As he has demonstrated in superior efforts such as
“Layer Cake,” “Stardust” and “X-Men: First Class”, Vaughn is an undeniably
stylish filmmaker and while this may not be a good movie, it is certainly a
good-looking one. Also, the
concept is promising, and, who knows, maybe when they get around to the next
installment of the franchise they are clearly setting up, they will finally
figure out the right tone and make a better movie as a result. Of course, I
said the same thing after coming out of “Kick-Ass” and we all know
how that turned out.
Source:: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/kingsman-the-secret-service-2015
