3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and very strong violence
By Derrick Bang
At its more entertaining moments
— which are many — this is a wildly audacious, totally bonkers spy spoof in the
classic 1960s mold; the best echoes hearken back to James Coburn’s two grand
Derek Flint flicks, Our Man Flint and
In Like Flint.
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| When Harry (Colin Firth, center) brings Eggsy (Taron Egerton, left) to a posh tailor's shop in order to outfit the young man properly, they're surprised to find Richard Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) present for the same reason. "Surprised," because Harry and Valentine already have learned that they're mortal enemies... |
It’s clever, funny, exhilarating
and ferociously paced by director Matthew Vaughn and editors Eddie Hamilton and
Jon Harris.
Unfortunately, it’s also
atrociously, grotesquely violent in spots: “wet” to a degree that makes a
mockery of its R rating. Such intentions are signaled quite early, when one of
our protagonists is dispatched in a manner more appropriate to gory horror
flicks ... and, indeed, I recall seeing precisely such butchery in the gruesome
2001 remake of 13 Ghosts.
Comic-book sensibilities or not,
this is pretty repugnant stuff for a mainstream production sporting an A-list
cast topped by Colin Firth and Michael Caine. And while this early scene is the
worst, it’s by no means alone; one particular character — the aptly named
Gazelle, played with panache by Sofia Boutella — is responsible for quite a few
sliced and diced limbs.
At the same time...
There’s no denying that Vaughn is
playing to his fan base, which enthusiastically embraced his similarly
über-violent 2010 adaptation of Kick-Ass.
Such folks are guaranteed to cheer an all-stops-out melee that erupts in the
third act: a brutally choreographed display of hand-to-hand slaughter on par
with Uma Thurman’s assault on “The Crazy 88’s” in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
So be advised: This is humor at
its darkest, and definitely not for the faint of heart.
Such cautionary notes aside...
Vaughn and frequent co-scripting
colleague Jane Goldman open their film with a couple of prologues that
introduce both Harry Hart (Firth) and Kingsman, the outwardly genteel
super-super-secret spy agency for which he works, under the code name of
Galahad. As befits an organization that bestows such sobriquets, the Kingsman
operatives answer to a chief dubbed Arthur (Caine), who dispatches his agents
to handle, ah, “messy” world situations that evade both conventional policing
and standard-issue covert agencies.
