Kingsman: The Secret Service review: Colin Firth gives the British spy a smooth makeover

Matthew Vaughn has leapt into a variety of genres – he started off writing Guy Ritchie’s crime capers, turned director with the mafia thriller Layer Cake, then took on superheroes with Kick Ass and X Men Days of the Future Past, and has now entered with the spy thriller ring with Kingsman: The Secret Service. Vaughn’s films tend to have two distinct qualities – a minor subversion of the genre, and simultaneously, full-blown indulgence into the elements of the genre. Following Vaughn’s tradition, Kingsman is as much a Bond movie as much as it is a parody of the same. There’s a super secret intelligence spy agency, led by an old horse (Michael Caine); a master spy, Harry Hart aka Galahad (Colin Firth); and a new kid on the block, Eggsy (Taron Egerton). There are snazzy and frequently outrageous gadgets, like the exploding pen and shoe knife, and a crackpot master villain who has a scheme to ‘end the world’ for the ‘benefit of mankind’. There are at least a dozen films that come to mind that tried to use all these tropes cleverly and ended up to be turkeys. And that’s not counting the four Spy Kids movies we’ve seen already. [caption id=“attachment_2125073” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Colin Firth in Kingsman.[/caption] Thanks to Vaughn, however, we get an added layer: of personality and panache. Vaughn turns clichés into self-aware plot devices that actually add gravitas to the story. Samuel Jackson plays Richmond Valentine, a lisping, evil tech genius who even convinces Obama to join him. His sidekick is a gorgeous woman (Sophie Boutella) who has knives for feet (a clear nod to Tee Hee and his hook-arm from Live And Let Die in which Roger Moore played Bond). Kingsman is the most British film we’ve seen in ages – Vaughn milks the stereotype of the perfect Englishman and contrasts it with Eggsy’s working-class, ghetto boy attitude to hilarious effect. Unposh as he might be, Eggsy does not spend time being awestruck by the amazing new world of Kingsman – in three seconds, he knows he needs to become a hotshot spy and jumps straight into training. Instead of wasting half the film’s runtime on the young spy run through hoops, Vaughn shows Eggsy’s training alongside the actual plot of the villain formulating his evil plan and Galahad trying to stop him. The training itself is fun and reminiscent of Will Smith’s test in the first Men in Black movie. Eggsy has life threatening tasks like escaping flooded rooms and training a puppy to sit, before he can get to the actual business of, you know, saving the world. With the self-aware stuff out of the way, one expects the popcorn stuff and there too, Vaughn does not disappoint. The action is exciting and entertaining. You see parkour runs, bar fights, cinema-verite style mayhem at a Church where a hundred people kill each other, as well as the big showdown at the villain’s lair. You even get the Knife Foot Lady slicing people into perfect halves. It’s all more profane and violent than you’d expect, so let’s say a cheer that our censors let Kingsman pass without a single cut. There’s very little to complain about here. Kingsman is a blast and yet another case for more of Mark Millar’s comic book oeuvre to be translated to big screen (Kingsman is an adaptation of Millar’s comic book series, The Secret Service). The humour is pretty risqué. There’s an outrageously funny scene featuring a Scandinavian princess and Eggsy’s new-found, Englishman vibe, which has exactly the kind of cheeky divisive humour you’d expect from Millar. It’s also nice to see Sophie Cookson play a role in a “guy” film that’s more than the good-looking damsel. She actually outdoes the hero in the film and is right in the centre of the plan to defeat the villain. Young Egerton is a talent to watch out for: with his handsome face, ripped body, on screen charm, massive range and a sense of humour, he’s the full package. Pair this guy up with (or rather against) Jack O Connell in a movie and you’ll have a winner. One doesn’t expect Colin Firth to punch people in the face, but he kicks a copious amount of a** here — it’s not often you can use phrases like that for either Firth or the films that he makes.