I’m torn. On the one hand, I’d really love to see Matthew Vaughn take the reins of a James Bond film. On the other, he’s so much more well suited to material like Kingsman: The Secret Service. Tonally it doesn’t vibe at all with the new, gritty Bond films, but Vaughn has such a keen eye for this kind of film that it’s a shame he’ll never get his shot. He’s clearly interested, too – the first third of X-Men: First Class was pretty much a proof of concept reel for a Bond film, and since the Bond gig currently rests in the able hands of Sam Mendes, it looks like Kingsman is just Vaughn saying “Screw it, I’ll make my own.”
Kingsman – which, like Vaughn’s Kick-Ass, is based on a graphic novel by Mark Millar – is at turns silly, over-the-top, bloody, and never less than enjoyable. It’s not so much a Bond film as it is an homage to the ridiculous, occasionally campy Bond films of yesteryear. For Christ’s sake, the villain has an arctic mountain lair and a henchman with blades for legs.
Eggsy (played winningly by relative newcomer Taron Egerton) is an aimless London tough guy who pretty much careens between felonies and fights, until he gets his ass saved by Harry Hart (Colin Firth), code name Galahad – seriously – whose life was saved by Eggsy’s father. Colin Firth has an absolute blast playing Harry, and honestly I haven’t seen him dive into a role with such fervor since The King’s Speech (let us not speak of Gambit). He gets some great fight scenes in Kingsman – particularly one in a pub and an amazing sequence in a church – and he’s clearly having the time of his life. Quite frankly, the movie misses him when he’s not on screen.
Luckily the rest of the cast is game as hell. Egerton is great, like I said, and he’s surrounded by heavyweights like Michael Caine and Mark Strong (surprisingly not playing a villain), as well as newcomers like Sophie Cookson, all of whom acquit themselves nicely. Then there’s Samuel L. Jackson, playing one of the more bizarre villains I’ve ever seen.
Jackson’s Richmond Valentine is Kingsman‘s best way of saying that it’s not a traditional spy film. Valentine dresses like Russell Simmons, speaks with a lisp, and gets sick at the sight of blood. He genuinely believes he’s the good guy, even though his diabolical scheme basically revolves around getting the whole world to kill each other as a way of population reduction. Jackson, like Firth, has a ball here, and gets some of the film’s funniest lines.
If this review seems light on plot, that’s because it is. You could probably guess the plot just by the trailers, or at least the story beats. Kingsman isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, it just wants to show us another mode of transportation. It’s rare to see an action comedy this competently made, and it expertly walks the tightrope between satirizing Bond films and celebrating them. Oh, and there’s a sequence near the end of exploding heads that is as good as the rest of the movie put together.
February is typically a shitty month for movies, and Kingsman isn’t enough to change that perception. But if you’re at all curious, you won’t be disappointed. At the very least, you have a better chance of getting laid after Kingsman than you do after Fifty Shades of Grey.
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