When super spy Harry Hart loses a member of his team in the late 90s, he makes a promise to look out for the young son of the man who died trying to save him. Seventeen years later, Eggsy is a wayward teen with a permanently distraught mother and violent scumbag of a step father. When Eggsy is arrested for stealing a car, Harry Hart seeks out the troubled youth and offers him the chance to become a part of the mysterious and super secret spy agency known as the Kingsman. Seeing what Harry Hart can do, the gadgets he uses, and the class he oozes, Eggsy agrees to sign up to the competitive training regime that could see him taking on billionaire lisping megalomaniac Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson).
It is very clear from
watching Kingsman that director Matthew Vaughn is not ready to give up on
directing a Bond film yet. Whether he will ever get the gig in the future on
the back of this film is very questionable. Kingsman is more like the film we
would get if Tarantino ever gets to make a Bond film. It’s self-referential and
smart, has a brilliantly foul mouth and is uber-violent from start to finish. Not
to mention the fact that it takes an outsider’s perspective on Britain and fills
the film with stereotypes of the class system, from the stiff upper lipped
suited gents of the Kingsman to the ‘yeah bruv’ yoof of working class ladland.
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| Early contender for best scene of the year? |
Kingsman takes great pleasure
in pinching from Bond films, while giving tradition a good shake up. Valentine’s
lisp, blade footed hench-woman and mountain lair all feel like they border on
homage and parody, whereas other moments indulge in characters talking
conventions before shockingly subverting what audiences have come to expect in these films.
To take the Tarantino
comparison further, Matthew Vaughn really knows how to revel in the joy of a good
splash of ultra-violence. The scene where Firth’s skilled spy is unleashed on a
church congregation to the sounds of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird is one of the
most excitingly executed, thrillingly shot and edited and funniest massacres in
film history. Nothing in the rest of the film can touch it, but that doesn’t
stop Vaughn from trying.
With its cast including Colin
Firth, Mark Strong, Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson and Mark Hamill, it’s a wonder
that Taron Egerton even gets a look in as Eggsy. Doubters may think that he is
a poor man’s substitute for the swagger and savagery of Jack O’ Connell but
Egerton emerges as a winning choice to hold the film together, charming with
his sly grin and convincing with his way with an umbrella.
Though there is a worrying
undercurrent of upper class superiority and even scepticism about those who campaign about climate change, if you can cast those niggling
fears aside, there surely won’t be a more gleefully violent film than Kingsman this year.
Watch the trailer:
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