This may not be true, but it feels like there’s more bloodshed in the two-plus hours of Matthew Vaughn’s “Kingsman: The Secret Service” than the four-plus hours of Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” saga. Vaughn’s carnage is cut—and sliced and diced—from a similar cartoonish cloth, taking place in bars, churches and underground bunkers, shot in fast-motion and slo-mo, using weapons both common and unorthodox. Heads explode en masse, bodies are dissected down the middle like apples, a hate-filled preacher gets a spike through his chest.
Vaughn’s approach will, to put it mildly, turn off some viewers. But to my eyes, the violence is not gratuitous, and Vaughn’s approach is stunningly imaginative in its execution. We know that Colin Firth, as the top agent in a super-secretive international spy agency, is really gyrating comically in front of a green-screen when he decimates a frothing hoard of bloodthirsty hate-church congregants in the movie’s signature CGI brawl, but it’s still choreographed with the forethought and deliberation of a ballet. Vaughn handles violence the way John Woo did in his legendary “pistol operas” of the 1980s.
Vaughn justifiably achieved mainstream acclaim for 2010’s “Kick-Ass,” which celebrated and parodied the superhero blockbuster genre. After a couple of “X-Men” movies in which Vaughn had to defer to the limitations of a PG-13 franchise, “Kingsman” will be as pure and satisfying to his fans as “Kick-Ass” was five years ago.
Based on the clever 2012 comic book series of the same name, “Kingsman” is a postmodern, self-referential riff on the archetype of the “gentleman spy.” Firth and his uber-secret service dress in fine menswear and use words like “bespoke” and “tet-a-tet” in basic conversation, but to them, James Bond is a childhood curio of saintly restraint. Get them in a room with their antagonists, and bodies will hit the floor.
“Kingsman” is, like “Kick-Ass,” foremost a comedy, but it manages to flirt with more dramatic conceits, and we take it seriously when it does. The heart and soul of the film is the classic hero’s journey undertaken by Taron Egerton’s character, “Eggsy” Unwin, a wayward youth with an abusive stepfather who finds, in his rigorous initiation as a Kingsman agent, a path toward redemption and enlightenment. He rises through the ranks just as the world is threatened by another mass extinction, courtesy of a hilariously cast Samuel L. Jackson as a disillusioned Silicon Valley billionaire bent on population reduction.
This is where “Kingsman” goes really bonkers—sometimes in directions that are downright chilling, and not terribly far off from the futuristic prognostications of Orwell and Huxley. Dressed in oversized glasses and a baseball cap, and hampered by a lisp, Jackson’s Richmond Valentine proposes that global warming is the symptom of man’s virus on earth. His plot to eradicate the virus involves implanting the proletariat with SIM cards under the auspices of “free Internet and cell coverage for all!” But there’s a more nefarious motivation for the implants, one that involves killing us all while preserving the world’s elite for a reboot of Earth.
Every now and then, between all the Grand Guignol bloodletting, the genuinely suspenseful action set pieces in air, land and water, and the crude but effective humor, the movie hits on uncomfortable truths: Much of the film’s doom-laden background noise about climate change is fact-based, for instance. And the villainy of Jackson’s character is rooted in fears of the so-called Illuminati, that collusion of politicians, entertainers and industry captains that secretly turns the world’s gears. It’s one of the more convincing tinfoil-hit conspiracies, and it’s given vivid life in “Kingsman.”
Certainly, the movie has three or four too many false climaxes, and you’ll feel exhausted by its end. But if Vaughn has done his job, you’ll also feel a bit uneasy about the world you live in—not an easy accomplishment in an ultraviolent popcorn flick.
“Kingsman: The Secret Service” opens today at most area theaters.
