Mathew Vaughn refreshes the posh British spy genre
Caught between straight-up James Bond and the Austin Powers
parody version, Kingsman is a high-octane combo of action and comedy that offers
a younger, streetwise variation on the 007 formula while pushing audiences’ favourite
elements such as over the top action and ridiculous super villains to exaggerated
extremes.
Adapted from Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons' 2012 comic book
series and directed by Matthew Vaughn with the same anything-goes ingenuity he
brought to Kick Ass, Kingsman is all over the place fun.
The film introduces young talent Taron
Egerton as lead role ‘Eggsy’. Ignorant of his own potential, Eggsy grows up in a low
income housing estate, falls in with a group of thugs and risks spending his
remaining years behind bars. At least, that’s the way things are headed until
Harry Heart (Colin Firth) springs him from prison and offers him an alternative;
and opportunity to be a Kingsman agent.
And so, two elaborate plots are set in motion. In the
first, we get young Eggsy thrust into a high-stakes boot camp to determine
which of a group of new recruits is worthy of becoming the next Kingsman. At
the same time, villain Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) moves forward
with his far-fetched diabolical plot while Harry attempts to stop him.
Vaughn skilfully plays to these class differences for
maximum amusement throughout, embracing the notion that 'Kingsman’ is as much a
comedy as it is an action movie. It’s the sort of movie where the world’s most
cultured men prefer to eat McDonald’s with expensive wine, while its streetwise
protagonist orders a far snobbier martini recipe than Bond ever did.
So, while seriousness has overtaken the Bond franchise in
recent years ‘Kingsman’ runs no such risk. Vaughn welcomes details that might
seem silly in another director’s hands and presents everything playfully enough
that plausibility isn’t a factor. Throughout the entire film
even when it stops making sense ‘Kingsman’ manages to be unstoppable fun for
the audience.
FilmGodz Rating: 8.5/10
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