Director: Matthew Vaughn
Writers: Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Samuel L Jackson
This new film from Matthew Vaughn tells the story of a
secret society of sophisticated super spies committing sanguine bloodshed. Colin Firth plays a deceptively large
part in this secret service that just really want to be the knights of the
roundtable using cool nicknames like Lancelot and Merlin. One of the agents
bites the bullet (that bullet being a grenade) and dies. Firth has a little
swear and proclaims that they must find a replacement. Meanwhile, Samuel L
Jackson is clearly a villain.
Taron Egerton plays Eggsy, a character who could easily be referred to as a ‘Badman’. Mr Firth throws a curved ball right at Eggsy’s boyish face as HE is Firth’s replacement choice and a James Bond style story commences with some comedy sprinkled on top.
First and foremost, I feel that it is important to note that the action scenes in this film have this incredible ability to polarise me from within. For example, there is a fight early in the film in a pub. In this particular scene, the camera direction seemed to heavily sway with the motion of the actors. This same technique was used to great effect (at a low quantity) in the Raid 2. Sometimes, is someone’s head gets smashed into a table, the camera would move with them making their head appear static and making the background movement more volatile. This made the hits seem more disorienting and powerful. The key to the success of this in the Raid 2 was that it wasn’t used excessively. In this bar fight, it is used on every single hit. This serves to make the audience sea-sick, not impressed.
While this specific technique is only notably present in this scene (every action sequence seemed to have it’s own distinguishing gimmick), the other fights weren’t better. The hotly debated ‘church scene’ is capped at good because of how it is shot. It should have been one cut less scene of non-stop insanity; instead it looked as if it was sped up to 1.5x speed. I could not even warrant a guess as to the reason for this but it certainly hindered the scene. The sequence was made to look choppy because of it and somewhat ceased my enjoyment.
What I do like about the film are most of the characters. Unfortunately, Colin Firth’s character is nothing greater than decent but besides him I liked every character. Particularly Samuel L Jackson and Mark Hamill. They played their characters in a goofy fashion in a film that, by all accounts, is pretty goofy. Jackson had an overt lisp that for some reason made him inherently funny to me, and Mark Hamill was pretty much playing a cartoon character (something that he is very used to).
Eggsy was also a fantastically written action protagonist. For a British male of the youthful variety, I managed to relate very easily to him and there was something about his reaction to all these supremely posh people’s confrontations that is hilarious. I actually expected him to fail quite a few times throughout the film, which increased the tension considerably. Making him an impressively memorable hero.
A revelation that very much took me by surprise was the part of the film that was more like Divergent than Die Another Day. One of my issues with the film is that it was too long. This is fuelled mostly by the fact that this whole ‘induction competition’ side mission didn’t even need to take place. I would have been much more engaged if Colin Firth just said, “Eggsy, you’re a spy now.’ Clearly this would be more cinematic than my alternative. It just seemed to me from the start that Eggsy was going to become a Kingsman so this entire plot point felt pointless to me. I would have much rather have had another 45 minutes of super spy action.
I may seem a bit negative towards the film but that certainly is not the factual case. I actually rather enjoyed it. I can stomach some distracting camerawork in otherwise entertaining action scenes. I can even withstand an overly obvious tournament plotline when it contains ample jokes in it. Of the things that I haven’t mentioned, I really enjoyed the entire film. It was consistently funny and from what I could see of the fights they were hilarious in a ridiculous way. The villainous plot and the villain behind it were also very compelling and original.
I very much enjoyed the film but there were a lot of features of the film that detracted from my enjoyment of it. The camerawork was vomit inducing regularly and the Dicergent-esque story-point was almost unbearable. Around these, however, is a comic satire of the nonsensical Bond films that was compelling for 127 minutes.
Kingsman: The Secret Service receives a: 7/10
Taron Egerton plays Eggsy, a character who could easily be referred to as a ‘Badman’. Mr Firth throws a curved ball right at Eggsy’s boyish face as HE is Firth’s replacement choice and a James Bond style story commences with some comedy sprinkled on top.
First and foremost, I feel that it is important to note that the action scenes in this film have this incredible ability to polarise me from within. For example, there is a fight early in the film in a pub. In this particular scene, the camera direction seemed to heavily sway with the motion of the actors. This same technique was used to great effect (at a low quantity) in the Raid 2. Sometimes, is someone’s head gets smashed into a table, the camera would move with them making their head appear static and making the background movement more volatile. This made the hits seem more disorienting and powerful. The key to the success of this in the Raid 2 was that it wasn’t used excessively. In this bar fight, it is used on every single hit. This serves to make the audience sea-sick, not impressed.
While this specific technique is only notably present in this scene (every action sequence seemed to have it’s own distinguishing gimmick), the other fights weren’t better. The hotly debated ‘church scene’ is capped at good because of how it is shot. It should have been one cut less scene of non-stop insanity; instead it looked as if it was sped up to 1.5x speed. I could not even warrant a guess as to the reason for this but it certainly hindered the scene. The sequence was made to look choppy because of it and somewhat ceased my enjoyment.
What I do like about the film are most of the characters. Unfortunately, Colin Firth’s character is nothing greater than decent but besides him I liked every character. Particularly Samuel L Jackson and Mark Hamill. They played their characters in a goofy fashion in a film that, by all accounts, is pretty goofy. Jackson had an overt lisp that for some reason made him inherently funny to me, and Mark Hamill was pretty much playing a cartoon character (something that he is very used to).
Eggsy was also a fantastically written action protagonist. For a British male of the youthful variety, I managed to relate very easily to him and there was something about his reaction to all these supremely posh people’s confrontations that is hilarious. I actually expected him to fail quite a few times throughout the film, which increased the tension considerably. Making him an impressively memorable hero.
A revelation that very much took me by surprise was the part of the film that was more like Divergent than Die Another Day. One of my issues with the film is that it was too long. This is fuelled mostly by the fact that this whole ‘induction competition’ side mission didn’t even need to take place. I would have been much more engaged if Colin Firth just said, “Eggsy, you’re a spy now.’ Clearly this would be more cinematic than my alternative. It just seemed to me from the start that Eggsy was going to become a Kingsman so this entire plot point felt pointless to me. I would have much rather have had another 45 minutes of super spy action.
I may seem a bit negative towards the film but that certainly is not the factual case. I actually rather enjoyed it. I can stomach some distracting camerawork in otherwise entertaining action scenes. I can even withstand an overly obvious tournament plotline when it contains ample jokes in it. Of the things that I haven’t mentioned, I really enjoyed the entire film. It was consistently funny and from what I could see of the fights they were hilarious in a ridiculous way. The villainous plot and the villain behind it were also very compelling and original.
I very much enjoyed the film but there were a lot of features of the film that detracted from my enjoyment of it. The camerawork was vomit inducing regularly and the Dicergent-esque story-point was almost unbearable. Around these, however, is a comic satire of the nonsensical Bond films that was compelling for 127 minutes.
Kingsman: The Secret Service receives a: 7/10
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