Kingsman: The Secret Service

Back in 2010 Matthew Vaughn directed and produced Kick-Ass, a rip-off/homage to superhero movies based on the Mark Millar graphic novel of the same name. An unhinged and pretty inflammatory piece of pop culture entertainment, it had violence galore, an 11 year-old girl dropping the c-bomb and its teenage protagonist masturbating to his high school teacher. In its own demented way, it was a modern masterpiece.

Here we are five years later and it’s Kingsman: The Secret Service’s turn to grace our screens, a rip-off/homage to spy movies based on the Mark Millar graphic novel of the same name, which also happens to be directed and produced by Matthew Vaughn. The gratuitous violence and profuse swearing still register, but there’s something distinctly amiss this time round. It’s almost as if Vaughn forgot to include some substance to go with the impeccable style.

Which is a shame, as the premise is admittedly an amusing one that is tailor-made for mainstream audiences (or British ones, at the very least). When one of his colleagues is brutally taken out in a botched Alpine mission, secret agent and old school gentleman Harry Hart (Colin Firth) sets out to find a younger replacement that’s more in touch with modern times. He ends up recruiting Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton), a street thug with a penchant for stealing cars and tussling with local hoodlums – underneath that rough exterior there might just be a promising Kingsman spy.

As a toff-meets-chav mismatched pairing, Kingsman hits the mark. It’s when the time comes to build a story around the set-up that the film falls apart. This is particularly evident in the lacklustre and sluggish middle section of the film, made up of derivative training segments and exposition scenes in which most of the exposition makes no sense at all. It is never clear what Samuel L. Jackson’s lazy portrayal of an evil genius is up to – something involving SIM cards and the environment, apparently – which makes suspending disbelief a bit challenging when you don’t know what your hero is fighting for exactly.

It also doesn’t help that the movie is littered with product placement that ranges from ham-fisted (“I’d like to get back to my lovely pint of Guinness”) to outright embarrassing (McDonalds and its products are repeatedly referenced, with Hart even thanking a character for treating him to “a Happy Meal”). Michael Bay would surely give his approval.

Thank god then for the final act, in which Vaughn pulls out the proverbial syringe and injects the film with a hefty dose of what’s been missing from Bauer, Bourne and Bond’s outings over the past decade: pure, unabashed fun. Remember all those cool gadgets 007 used to toy around with? Shoe-blades, electric-shock rings and, best of all, multi-purpose umbrellas feature heavily throughout. Wish Matt Damon’s amnesiac spy went up against more colourful henchmen? Sofia Boutella’s prosthetic blades make her a sidekick (emphasis on the “kick”) to remember. And for those of you who fell asleep during Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Colin Firth makes up for that film’s lack of action by appearing in what must be the most frenzied, not mention blasphemous fight sequence ever to appear on film, to the triumphant sound of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird. Mr Darcy was never this violent.

It’s moments like these that you realise that Vaughn & co. are willing to go places that most blockbusters are too afraid of (and speaking of going in certain places, wait till you get a look at the film’s last shot), which make its flaws all the more infuriating. As a piece of Friday night entertainment, Kingsman: The Secret Service delivers in spades. But if you were hoping for a post-modern classic take on the spy genre, then you’re out of luck. It just ain’t that kind of movie, bruv.

3/5