In 2011 Colin Firth won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in “The King’s Speech”, which included many memorable scenes. Now, four years later, Firth stars in “Kingsman: The Secret Service”, director Matthew Vaughn’s follow-up to “X-Men: First Class”. “Kingsman” does provide Firth with the opportunity to appear in, quite possibly, the most memorable scene of his long, successful career. It’s also his worst.
Vaughn attempts to have fun by breaking plenty of rules of the action genre, mostly with a ridiculously high level of violence, purely for shock value. I can almost guarantee the body count in this film will be higher than in any other action film this year, maybe any film period. In fact, if Vaughn ever writes a book about the making of “Kingsman”, it would certainly be titled “How to Get Away with a Ton of Movie Murders”.
The script is loosely based on a series of comics published from 2012-2013. And it shows. Unfortunately, the over-the-top visual style is more appropriate for the page. Watching someone, literally, get sliced in half, from head to toe, and then split apart, probably looked real cool in the comics. On screen it just seems silly. And even though the source material is recent, a lot of “Kingsman” is surprisingly dated, including the plan by quirky evil villain Valentine (played by Samuel L. Jackson, with a baseball cap, a lisp, and a love for Big Macs) to save the planet from global warming. Not a lot of imagination there.
The Kingsman secret agents, of course, must stop Valentine. But long before we get there, a young street punk named Eggsy (played by Taron Egerton) gets recruited by Firth’s veteran, well-tailored, Kingsman agent, Harry, to join the program. Eggsy must first go through a series of tests with other fellow candidates. Much like we’ve seen over and over in films including “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent”, this process takes way too long before reaching its obvious conclusion. And as for that career-low scene involving Firth – let’s just say you’ll know it when you see it.
The main problem with “Kingsman” is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be: A modern take on the classic British Spy movie (a.k.a. the Bond films)? An anti-British spy movie, tweaking the old formula? Or, the way Vaughn should have gone: a satire of the classic British spy movie, which it does a nice job with in certain spots. I do give Vaughn credit for being able to keep our interest for most of the 2+ hours. However, by the time we get to the slow-motion, exploding heads, accompanied by full orchestra, it’s clear Vaughn is out of ideas and is simply throwing everything he can at the screen, just hoping something will stick.
On The Official LCJ Report Card, “Kingsman: The Secret Service” gets a C.
Running Time: 129 min.