Kingsman: The Secret Service
Back to the British Isles again tonight. Kingsman, adapted from a comic of the same name is an enjoyable mashup of a lot of 1960’s fantasy-spy stuff, including favorites like James Bond, The Avengers, The Man from Uncle, co-star Michael Caine’s Ipcress File, Dr Evil and a little bit of Mars Attacks. Larger-than-life villains, crazy nihilistic plots, cool, collected, well dressed British agents and unlikely events are the fun of stories like this. The crazier, the better. In Kingsman, Samuel Jackson plays “Valentine”, an extroverted, deranged billionaire with a plot to counter global warming by triggering a cell phone signal that will in turn trigger billions to murder, main and slaughter anyone in sight via a sort of electronic rage-virus….fewer people, less carbon, the earth is saved. A small group of selected, compliant people have been chosen to repopulate what’s left of civilization. Obviously, this guy has to be stopped before his nefarious plot can wreak havoc.
In this story, Colin Firth plays Harry Hart (Galahad is his code name), a member of the elite Kingsmen, charged with doing anything necessary to prevent any disaster of this sort that they see coming, without regard to law or anything else. Recruiting new Kingsmen, one of his recruits is lower class Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a rebellious guy from a troubled background, in whom he sees some sort of potential. They are going up against Valentine, a super-villain and his evil minions, a guy who has satellites, secret underground complexes and his own army. They are kidnapping elites and installing self-destruct devices in various people’s heads, getting ready for the cell phone-induced apocalypse. Eggsy, however, is to be the new hero, saving the world for another day.
Will they succeed in preventing the end of the world as we know it? Will global warming be forestalled by murdering 99% of the population? Will you recognize my reference to Mars Attacks? (Hint - it has to do with exploding heads). Will Eggsy fulfill his destiny as a hero of British Intelligence? You will just have to see for yourself. I enjoyed this. It’s not a great movie, but it’s fun if you ever enjoyed Dr Evil or The Avengers (the old 1960’s version of course). The acting isn’t much and the plot is pretty much over-the-top, but that’s the idea. As usual, Sam Jackson is quite good in his arch-evil role. Colin Firth is his usual fine self as super-British, umbrella wielding agent Galahad, as are Michael Caine and Mark Strong as boss and handler. You might even notice Mark Hamill in there, nearly unrecognizable. As comic book movies go, in my opinion, this is less tedious than most, enjoyably ridiculous and if you ever liked John Steed or Napoleon Solo, it’s fairly bloody fun.
