Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
The story of a super-secret spy organization that recruits an unrefined but promising street kid into the agency's ultra-competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius.
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Director Matthew Vaughn mixes a wallop of James Bond with a bit of Austin Powers, stirs in a little “Hunger Games,” adds a flavor of “My Fair Lady,” and finishes it off with a dash of “28 Days Later.”
Cross-genre pollination has brought us My Fair Lady meets James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer.
With nods to John Steed (the umbrella) and Harry Palmer (the glasses), this finds Taron Egerton’s “Eggsy” recruited by an elite super-spy unit of gentlemanly spooks who attempt to transform him from effing estate kid to Old Etonian killer in My Fair Lady fashion.
Adapted by Vaughn and Jane Goldman from the Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons comic as a kind of self-aware riff on Pygmalion or, really, My Fair Lady, the writers keep things moving.
It's the story of a streetwise London youth named Eggsy (Taron Egerton) who is rescued from his life of petty crime and run-ins with the law by a posh secret agent named Harry Hart (Colin Firth) and trained to be a new generation of spy (as the film cheekily points out, it's basically "Pretty Woman" or "My Fair Lady," but with way more guns), working for a top secret, privatized spying operation.
"Have you seen Trading Places, Nikita, Pretty Woman?" Colin Firth's Harry Hart (code name: Galahad) asks our hero Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a council estate kid with a chip on his shoulder.
Comparisons to Liza Doolittle and “Trading Places” are referenced early enough in the movie to let us know that Vaughn isn’t afraid of exposing how self-aware the movie will be.
Just as Galahad knocks out the teeth of his enemies, the script makes on-the-nose reference to James Bond and, of all things, 1980s Eddie Murphy comedy "Trading Places."
In one of the film’s scattered semi-funny riffs, Harry asks Eggsy whether he knows Trading Places , La Femme Nikita , or Pretty Woman.
In a particularly amusing scene, Harry tries to prepare Eggsy for the transformation he’s about to embark on, citing more modern rags-to-riches grooming films like Trading Places and La Femme Nikita, none of which the young man has seen.
There are the Bond homages, of course (not least being a dagger-adorned shoe not unlike the one sported by Lotte Lenya in From Russia with Love), but other espionage sagas also factor into play, from a throwaway gag line invoking TV's Get Smart to the casting of Caine — Cold War spy Harry Palmer in three 1960s thrillers — in a key role.
It is never clear what he’s up to or why—something about destroying the world with signet rings that deliver 10,000 volts of electricity, mobile phone cards that drive adversaries into violent rages, and shoes with knives in the toes like Lotte Lenya in From Russia With Love.
And so they go and get Valentine, with old-Bond gadgetry, like Rosa Klebb’s poisoned toe-tip blade in “From Russia with Love,” as well as a variation on the “Men in Black” amnesia “flashy thing.”
Based on the 2012 graphic novel "The Secret Service" by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, director Matthew Vaughn's picture will appeal to anyone who enjoyed Vaughn's earlier "Kick-Ass."
A lot of that has to do with the filmmaker, Matthew Vaughn, an English aristocrat who had a huge success with "X-Men: First Class" but whose other slumming, sadistic movies include "Kick-Ass" and "Layer Cake."
They did it with "Kick-Ass," and now they seem to have perfected the model with " Kingsman: The Secret Service ."
Writer-director Matthew Vaughn and his writing partner Jane Goldman once again adapt one of the graphic novels of Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons – they previously adapted their Kick-Ass booksand here they bring to life the pair's The Secret Service, something of a My Fair Lady tale with Eggsy as Eliza and Harry Hart as Henry Higgins.
Based on a graphic novel, “Kingsman: The Secret Service” aims to recapture the exuberant mix of comedy and mayhem that distinguished the director’s “Kick-Ass,” but in this case the recipe proves less digestible, despite the excellence of many of the ingredients.
Based on a comic book by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons -- whose Kick-Ass (2010) was also turned into a vaguely offensive movie, but one which I enjoyed -- Kingsman: The Secret Service tells the story of an old, private society of gentleman spies, not subject to any government regulations.
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Hidden behind a suit-shop storefront on Savile Row, Kingsman HQ are accessed through a series of “Get Smart”-style secret doors and tunnels, while the group itself is presided over by an old blue blood played by Michael Caine.
Yet if we were to say what “Kingsman” most resembles, it would be the old TV show “Get Smart,” which was conceived as a Bond satire in the mid-1960s.
There are the Bond homages, of course (not least being a dagger-adorned shoe not unlike the one sported by Lotte Lenya in From Russia with Love), but other espionage sagas also factor into play, from a throwaway gag line invoking TV's Get Smart to the casting of Caine — Cold War spy Harry Palmer in three 1960s thrillers — in a key role.
A subpar spoof on '60s spy films clothed in dazzling, if not migraine-inducing, visuals, Kingsman is a cross between a James Bond film and a Marvel superhero comic, with a nod to Dr. No, Our Man Flint, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and Get Smart.
There are also unsubtle references to The Avengers (the '60s TV series not the Marvel movie) and even (would you believe?) Get Smart.
The opening sequence (which actually quotes a Miike film, "Ichi, the Killer") is a doozy.
Sofia Boutella walks on weaponized prosthetics capable of slicing a man in twain, à la Ichi the Killer.
That slaying comes courtesy of billionaire business mogul Valentine (played by Samuel L Jackson) and his henchwoman, Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), who does things with her bionic legs that wouldn’t look out of place in Ichi the Killer .
Fast and brash and told with a dangerous amount of cheek, this feels like a reaction to the Bond films in the same way that "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" was a reaction to the old Republic serials.
Vaughn has a lot of fun frolicking in this playground, doing unexpected things and engaging in a head game of one-upsmanship with Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark .
Alas, it seems to have taken its inspiration from one of the lesser Roger Moore efforts than the classic Connerys and the result is a fitfully amusing but increasing tedious and occasionally appalling mess that plays like "The Man with the Golden Gun" with ridiculous amounts of gore and severed limbs on display, though the nipples this time around are not so much superfluous as they are distressingly nonexistent.
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The fight scenes are staged with "X-Men"-level expertise, which means there's lots of slow motion and they go on forever.
It’s obvious that the filmmaker, responsible for such previous revisionism as X-Men: First Class and Kick-Ass , is indebted to the graphic novel style employed by source material authors Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar, and when it works, it’s a wonder to behold.
Point being, this is Vaughn’s cash-in project for reviving the X-Men franchise and if it does well enough we'll likely see a sequel.
The fourth crack at comic-based material for writer-director Matthew Vaughn and co-scripter Jane Goldman (following the excellent X-Men: First Class, the enchanting Stardust and the underwhelming Kick-Ass), Kingsman is first and foremost a salute to British secret agent James Bond, the suave, martini-sipping spy created by novelist Ian Fleming and immortalized by Sean Connery, Daniel Craig and a few other dapper gents.
Directed by Matthew Vaughn (he of Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class ), this is world-class action filmmaking at the service of a smug, soulless story.
This 007 allegiance is evident even before entering the theater, as one of the posters owes its design to the classic one for 1981's For Your Eyes Only.
From its poster, a gleeful pastiche of Moore-era Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only , to Colin Firth’s on screen preference for outlandish spy movies, it’s clear that Matthew Vaughn’s goal with Kingsman: The Secret Service is to have fun, the kind of fun we used to have in the pre-9/11, pre-post modern world, when it wasn’t necessary to temper fantasy with realism and a heightened reality was presented without apology.