Tone-Deaf Spy Spoof
Colin Firth Gets Wasted
The times have changed. There was an era five years ago or more when director/co-writer Matthew Vaughn’s gloomy deconstructionist spoof of the spy thriller genre would have played better. “Kingsman: Secret Service” still wouldn’t be a good movie, but it wouldn’t have come across as the tone-deaf exploitation of gratuitous violence that it is.
Remember the days when audiences buzzed about how “dark” the Harry Potter series had gotten, and about how wonderfully “dark” Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise was? In 2015, after the Sandy Hook killings and the Colorado cinema massacre, “dark” is a style than needs to be carefully massaged in order to be successful.
Without giving away the film’s most over-the-top act of mass murder (which occurs in a church preached at by a racist minister): the scene represents a point of no return for a movie that didn’t have enough going for it before this misbegotten sequence hits you like an air conditioner falling from the window of a Manhattan high-rise.
Part of the problem stems from this film’s shallow origins, in a 2012 comic book series rather than from the more literary form of novels (see Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne book-based movies).
As the screenwriter behind such action fiestas as “Kick-Ass,” “The Debt,” and “X-Men: First Class,” Matthew Vaughn loves gunplay and explosive set pieces. Vaughn’s producing credits on the Guy Ritchie-directed Tarantino rip-offs “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” show you where he’s coming from. His directorial debut (“Layer Cake”) put Daniel Craig up for consideration as the next James Bond. Well done. Still, Matthew Vaughn is no Quentin Tarantino. If you ever blunder upon “Inglorious Basterds” on cable TV, you’ll find yourself unable to stop watching it because Tarantino uses weapon, fights, and brutality in the service of story and character, never the other way around.
All narrative movement is energized by the opposing (urgent) motivations of Tarantino’s methodically detailed characters. These sophisticated narrative waters are too deep for Matthew Vaughn. He’s not that kind of filmmaker and never will he be.
“Kingsman: Secret Service” is a relentlessly violent spoof with very few laughs. Samuel L. Jackson single-handedly elicits the film’s much-needed chuckles as Valentine, a villainous billionaire who speaks with a lisp. Valentine has an unconventional plan to correct climate change. He controls politicians and investors with brain chips he implants while providing the public with free cellphone and Internet SIM cards with which he can turn them into killing machines. Valentine envisions a world with a significantly smaller population. The character is really just a revved up version of any world leader engaged in imperialist war (Obama, Putin, etc.).
During a business meeting with Valentine, Colin Firth’s British Secret Service agent Harry Hart (a.k.a. Galahad) bemoans preferring the older James Bond movies when they weren’t so “serious.” And yet, it is this film’s overreaching attempt at political satire that gums up the works.
Kingsman agent Hart (Firth) lives with the daily torment of knowing that his failure to recognize an explosive situation in battle 10 years earlier led to the death of a fellow agent whose family now struggles with poverty. The deceased agent’s son Eggsy (Taron Egerton) lives in a South London housing estate with his mom and her abusive boyfriend. A brush with the law sends Eggsy begging for assistance from Harry. A bond forms that leads to a mentoring relationship wherein Eggsy trains for a spot as a Kingsman agent.
Eggsy’s coming-of-age subplot allows for costume changes into Savile Row suits, and for a get-to-know-your-gadgets-and-guns sequence stolen from every James Bond movie ever made.
Based on the utter failure of tone that derails “Kingsman: Secret Service,” it seems unlikely that we will see the concept transform into a franchise. It has too many strikes against it.
Rated R. 129 mins.
