Kingsman
Don't Go! Weak characters and weaker integrity.
Posh spy trains ASBO boy.
Matthew Vaughn's (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class) latest comic-based film, Kingsmen: The Secret Service, was supposed to hit screens in October 2014, but was cleverly pushed back by Fox to collide with the same release date as the ignominious Fifty Shades of Grey, basically to give men something to watch while their wives or girlfriends were getting their rocks off with some light bondage in the screen next door. They also, cleverly, made it very violent, with plenty of crashes, bangs and wallops; just to make sure the men couldn't hear the sound of spanking and swooning from the next screen.
To say this is the male equivalent of Fifty Shades is not far off being accurate, since it represents a kind of soft porn for stylised violence and stylish suits. If you have seen Vaughn's previous films Kick-Ass and Kick-Ass 2 this will come as no surprise - the man has a penchant for balletic assassinations with a comic-book twang. This time round he has taken on the story of the Kingsmen - a secret society of sharp-shooting, suave super spies in stupendously sophisticated suits and shiny shoes. Colin Firth (The King's Speech) is Harry Hart, the leading English gentleman spy; with newcomer Taron Egerton playing his working class protégé, Eggzy. Samuel L. Jackson (Every Film Ever Made) is Valentine, the megalomaniac corporate villain with an amputee body-guard, whose sharpened metal prosthetic legs take the term "blade-runner" to a whole new and deadly level.
To say this is the male equivalent of Fifty Shades is not far off being accurate, since it represents a kind of soft porn for stylised violence and stylish suits. If you have seen Vaughn's previous films Kick-Ass and Kick-Ass 2 this will come as no surprise - the man has a penchant for balletic assassinations with a comic-book twang. This time round he has taken on the story of the Kingsmen - a secret society of sharp-shooting, suave super spies in stupendously sophisticated suits and shiny shoes. Colin Firth (The King's Speech) is Harry Hart, the leading English gentleman spy; with newcomer Taron Egerton playing his working class protégé, Eggzy. Samuel L. Jackson (Every Film Ever Made) is Valentine, the megalomaniac corporate villain with an amputee body-guard, whose sharpened metal prosthetic legs take the term "blade-runner" to a whole new and deadly level.
Besides the world needing to be saved from a bad guy with an odd sense of logic and bizarrely decent environmental intentions, Eggzy is also put forward as a potential replacement for a murdered Kingsman; so we watch as he is pitted against a bunch of posh folk in a series of odd trials to see if he can win the job and become the "boy dun good" from the London council estate, innit.
This gives us a trippy, colourful, hyperactive version of James Bond with a twist of The Hunger Games. That all sounds good on paper, and indeed, there are slick moments of spectacularly choreographed violence (with a lethal umbrella playing a big role) and a couple of chortles to lighten the mood. But for all its visual craft and energy, this007 pastiche feels empty and cold. Like getting a cheap suit off the rack rather than tailored at Savile Row, it may initially look quite good, but the whole experience just isn't quite as fulfilling and begins to fall apart all too easily once you start tugging lightly at the threads. The missing ingredient is a reason to care about each of the characters, who all have a streak of tediousness that will leave you feeling sufficiently indifferent to each of their journeys.
This gives us a trippy, colourful, hyperactive version of James Bond with a twist of The Hunger Games. That all sounds good on paper, and indeed, there are slick moments of spectacularly choreographed violence (with a lethal umbrella playing a big role) and a couple of chortles to lighten the mood. But for all its visual craft and energy, this007 pastiche feels empty and cold. Like getting a cheap suit off the rack rather than tailored at Savile Row, it may initially look quite good, but the whole experience just isn't quite as fulfilling and begins to fall apart all too easily once you start tugging lightly at the threads. The missing ingredient is a reason to care about each of the characters, who all have a streak of tediousness that will leave you feeling sufficiently indifferent to each of their journeys.
Also, when you look beyond the action and playful banter, there is an insidious reinforcement of racial and class stereotypes in Kingsman which leaves a bitter after-taste. Eggzy, as a boy from a council estate, is portrayed as a hopeless case that would amount to nothing without the salvation of the upper-class Kingsman. While the point about class is bad enough, even more galling is the fact that all of the Kingsmen are not only well-spoken and well dressed, but universally white. These are the good guys. Compare this to the only black character in the film - the bad guy, trying to savagely destroy humanity while dressed as a late nineties rapper and speaking with a lisp. None of the trainees seeking to become a new Kingsman are of any ethnicity other than white and it is consciously or sub-consciously implied that certain types of people are simply "more appropriate" than others, but occasionally a lucky working class chap (still white) will be tossed a silver spoon to gnaw on.
It strikes that in the 21st Century, this kind of barely veiled racial stereotyping in blockbuster films - calculated or not - is dated, unnecessary and, frankly, reprehensible. In the same way that Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,) could quite easily play James Bond, casting Harry Hunt as a black Englishman would quite easily have suited the film - a modern, MP3, dub-stepping version of the English spy genre, overthrowing the archaic, gramophone-playing ballroom approach that we are traditionally used to. Instead, Kingsman is a reflection of how antiquated the film industry can be in relation to race even when it has an easy opportunity not to be, and how much needs to change before such movies can join the rest of us in the modern age.
So don't go, not only because the characters lack substance and the film relies too heavily on stylised violence to distract you from that, but also because as much as Kingsman attempts to be a cooler, more modern version of Bond, what will never be cool or modern is its slovenly perpetuation of race and class stereotypes.
It strikes that in the 21st Century, this kind of barely veiled racial stereotyping in blockbuster films - calculated or not - is dated, unnecessary and, frankly, reprehensible. In the same way that Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,) could quite easily play James Bond, casting Harry Hunt as a black Englishman would quite easily have suited the film - a modern, MP3, dub-stepping version of the English spy genre, overthrowing the archaic, gramophone-playing ballroom approach that we are traditionally used to. Instead, Kingsman is a reflection of how antiquated the film industry can be in relation to race even when it has an easy opportunity not to be, and how much needs to change before such movies can join the rest of us in the modern age.
So don't go, not only because the characters lack substance and the film relies too heavily on stylised violence to distract you from that, but also because as much as Kingsman attempts to be a cooler, more modern version of Bond, what will never be cool or modern is its slovenly perpetuation of race and class stereotypes.
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