Kingsman is absurd, outlandish, totally over the top, and cheeky as all hell. It’s a movie that is in love with the fact that it’s a movie, and as such, the film can never be taken seriously, and poses no real threat or menace – you just sit there and laugh at the audaciousness and the verve and the craft. This is a hyper-violent and extremely knowing send up of Bond and spy movies in general, a gleefully sadistic and sometimes cruel R-rated cartoon that’s been directed with the same smack-you-in-the-face style that don’t-give-a-shit British director Matthew Vaughn brought to his similarly ribald and cheerfully vulgar superhero riff Kick-Ass. There’s an anger that runs throughout Kingsman which is interesting to note; I detected some of the subversive shades of Fight Club and Falling Down running through its veins, while the more obvious touchstones of Bond, Bourne, Bauer, and Kill Bill are up front and center.
Given that this is a big-budget offering from a major studio – 20th Century Fox – I was shocked and pleased to see the level of out-right craziness on display here. This is an action film first and a comedy second, and it’s yet another indication of the Gareth Evans factor; it’s as if all Hollywood action guys got a chance to see The Raid and The Raid 2 and they now feel they have to up the ante. I also noticed some stylistic nods to Running Scared during the numerous shoot-outs. Vaughn brings a mean streak to much of his work (Layer Cake, his debut, is still my favorite of his) and while it’s clear he loves the trappings of the Bond universe and spy movies, he’s really set out to make a wink-wink, tongue-firmly-in-cheek effort that pokes fun at the ludicrousness of everything.
Because of this, the intense violence, while entertainingly stylish in the moment and bracing to witness as a result of the somewhat recent PG-13’ing of Hollywood, holds no lasting impact – this is a film that is comprised of a series of money shots, all the way from the opening frames, up until the final bits, concerned with being “cool” at all times, and as a result, nothing carried any weight or honest heft. Which is fine. It’s an R-rated comic book, and Vaughn really seems to excel with this tone. Some of it looks absolutely great (the stylish cinematographer is George Richmond), some of it looks like overly-CGI’d junk, but all of it is made with a certain bloody zest and boldness and the sheer delirium of the action set-pieces can’t be denied. Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson deliver a truly fantastic musical score that sounds like outtakes from a Bond flick in many areas, and which helps drive the film home in every manner.
Colin Firth appears to have had the time of his life playing the suave and lethal member of the Kingsman, a secret group of British spies who help to keep the world in balance, while newcomer Taron Egerton appealingly underplays his fish-out-of-water character, the young recruit who has to step up to the plate. Samuel L. Jackson camps it up with a lisp as the megalomaniacal villain with a hilariously convoluted scheme to rid the world of most of the population in an effort to reverse global warming. Or something like that. Just wait until you see the method to his madness – it’s hysterical and nasty and I was sort of shocked to see it played out to the degree that it was. All of Kingsman is purposefully asinine, and as previously mentioned, it’s never realistically menacing or truly suspenseful. This is an over-stuffed, frenetic, sometimes witty, mostly predictable piece of escapism that blows heads up with a smile. And listen – any movie that finds the time to slaughter at least 100 ultra-conservative, right-wing, hate-spewing, super-Christians from Kentucky and ends its narrative with the promise of kinky sex is A-OK with me. This a’int your father’s 007.
Podcasting Them Softly 