This will be a busy year for cinematic spies with James Bond to return in Spectre, Ethan Hunt back for another Mission: Impossible and director Guy Ritchie rebooting the cult 1960s TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E as a feature film. First off the mark is Kingsman: The Secret Service, an edgy, entertaining and ultraviolent spy spoof from Ritchie’s friend and frequent collaborator, Matthew Vaughn.
The rest of the secret agents may have a hard time being taken seriously after Kingsman — two fingers raised at gritty, self-serious post-Bourne spy films and a big, sloppy kiss for campy Cold War relics like The Man from U.N.C.L.E and the Bond of the 1960s and 1970s. Not all of its jokes (many of them filthy) land and some of its excesses irritate rather than shock, yet Kingsman has enough stylish action and off-kilter charm to pull off its blend of Kick-Ass and Austin Powers.
Like Wanted and Vaughn’s Kick-Ass, Kingsman is based on a comic from canny pop-culture deconstructionist Mark Millar. It proposes that a group of wealthy Saville Row tailors formed a secret society after World War I to preserve world stability. Taking codenames from the Knights of the Roundtable, these British gentlemen use their financial resources, connections and access to high-technology to solve problems that government secret services cannot.
When agent Lancelot (Jack Davenport) dies on a mission, the kingsmen need a replacement. Seasoned agent Harry Hart aka Galahad (Colin Firth) proposes wayward working class youth Eggsy (Taron Egerton) for the job. Meanwhile in a nod to Moonraker — one of the ropier Bond films– technology billionaire and insane genius Richmond Valentine (Samuel L Jackson) has found a cure for the planet’s environmental woes. The only problem is that it involves killing most of Earth’s human population.
From this basic setup, Vaughn creates a merrily vulgar and violent fantasy that — in between fourth wall busting jokes about spy films — also lampoons tech utopianism, class prejudice, Bible belters, one percenters and misanthropic greens. Starting out as an arched eyebrow at the absurdities of its genre, Kingsman works itself into a delirious mess of Robert Rodriguez-style gruesome humour and gratuitous violence by its third act.
Kingsman’s biggest asset is Firth, who channels gentlemen spies like The Avengers’ John Steed and U.N.C.L.E’s Napoleon Solo (trivia: until a paternity test proved otherwise, it was thought the original Solo, Robert Vaughn, was Matthew Vaughn’s father). Firth’s immaculately groomed Galahad riffs off the stuffy aristocrats he played in films like The King’s Speech and Pride & Prejudice.
The film milks the incongruity between Galahad’s aloof bearing and his prowess as a killing machine for many of its laughs. From an early scene where the priggish Galahad teaches some manners to a pack of yobs using a bulletproof brolly — among other gadgets — Firth commands the film with his dry, gently mocking performance.
Newcomer Egerton is an able foil for Firth as the rough-mannered yet sweet-natured young man put through a Pygmalion-like transformation under Galahad’s guidance. Samuel L Jackson, meanwhile, relishes his role as a squeamish, lisping megalomaniac who recoils at the sight of blood; the Jaws to his Hugo Drax is dancer Sofia Boutella who has a pair of vicious blades where her lower legs used to be.
There are amusing supporting roles from Mark Hamill as a climate change scientist, Mark Strong as the kingsmen’s Q figure, Merlin, and Michael Caine as the head of the kingsmen (codename Arthur, of course).
Like X-Men: First Class — Vaughn’s 1960s superhero caper — Kingsman is a well-crafted film, let down only by a few clumsy green-screen effects. Watch out for a turning point scene of cartoonish mayhem that will have the parts of the audience that don’t walk out in disgust laughing its sheer audacity. This single-take action sequence — scored to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird — is a showy piece of filmmaking that displays Vaughn’s chops at shooting action.
Vaughn’s affection for spy films is apparent from his loving nods to sillier conventions like the mad villain, outlandish henchmen, sartorial elegance, expensive liquor and goofy gadgets. Much of the fun comes from picking up the references to old-style espionage movies. Even as he brings back some of the fun to spy flicks, Vaughn isn’t afraid to push genre trappings to insane conclusions. His film does for secret agents what The Cabin in the Woods did for slasher flicks. — (c) 2015 NewsCentral Media