Kingsman: The Secret Service Preview Review

Just to let all who read on know, this is a SPOILER FREE review.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a movie very loosely based on the comic book The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. The movie is written by Jane Goodman and Matthew Vaughn, who also directs. This is the same team behind the similar Millar comic adaptation, Kick Ass.
The film, unlike its unfortunate title, is anything but clunky. It is a slick, fun, R Rated, filthy humour and ultra violence filled romp that plays like an intentional love letter to Roger Moore era James Bond.

Kingsman in both its humour and action, plays a lot like Kick Ass did before it and like Kick Ass the movie contains plenty of awesome jaw dropping and taboo busting moments. Vaughn also repeats the trick of editing the fight scenes to a retro soundtrack that, while not exactly giving Guardians of the Galaxy a run for its money, is still damn cool.

The actors all appear to be having a great time and mostly play the whole thing straight, even when the situations are anything but. It's sad then that some of the dialogue is occasionally knowingly winking at the audience and slips into heavy handed referential moments. It never spoils the scenes outright but everyone should already be getting the joke without turning this into Austin Powers with gore. Colin Firth, Vaughn staple Mark Strong and newcomer Taron Egerton are all particularly superb. Firth, not always the first name you think of as cool or a fantastic ass kicker steps up in this and steals the show.

Samuel L Jackson's lisping, brightly costumed villain may be the tipping point for some because while he is undeniably fun and knowingly over the top, the film might have been better served by having someone with just a little bit more menace. You could still have the Bond villain like plot, mountain lair, henchmen and almost-superhuman sidekick with a singular weapon while having just a touch of genuine menace to the main, big bad. Even Donald Pleasence's Blofeld was sinister in his own way.

The directing is assured and excitable with the fight scenes, in particular, being a stand out because while they are very kinetic, you can tell exactly what is happening at all times. There's my usual reservation about CGI, especially where limb hacking or fake blood is concerned and something like Kill Bill 1's prosthetics and make up effects would've worked better here. The myriad of nods to old 60s and 70s romps, usually starring the perpetual eyebrow raising of one Sir Roger Moore or maybe Peter O'Toole, are a joy to anyone, like myself, that genuinely loves that kind of stuff or grew up with it. You can't be cynical in a film like this, be along for the ride or don't bother. It asks you to sit back, have fun and suspend belief from the opening scene onwards.

The nicest thing though about the whole thing was just how occasionally surprising it was and how it contains sequences and scenes you just can't quite believe you are watching on the big screen. Like Kick Ass, Vaughn and Goodman are unafraid to show you images that have been common place in some of the more fringe comic books but rarely, if ever, make it to the screen of your local multiplex. They also unashamedly put in the kind of jokes that you may tell your friends in a bar after a couple but, again, rarely if ever get an airing for mass consumption. It's a messy, exciting, enjoyable, cool, breezy breath of fresh air.

The Director, Matthew Vaughn, who briefly introduced the screening I was at, said that distributer Fox was unsure of its potential in America because the film was "very English". This may explain why Fox messed around with the release date a few times and why, sadly, the trailer spoils so much of the film attempting to 'explain' it. As for the Englishness or not of the film, I don't think Fox has anything to worry about. It will happily ride the wave of the current Anglophile (Brit loving geek) nostalgia boom that is sweeping America with the likes of TV Shows Sherlock, Dr.Who and Downton Abbey.
It also has more than a few echoes of James Bond which has always been a big hit in The States.
Plus it has every American's favourite older Brit Colin Firth in it being undeniably awesome and giving Liam Neeson a run for his money in the action stakes.
If there is one very British aspect to the movie it's that it has absolutely no regard for authority and is joyously, ridiculously subversive on all fronts. It certainly will make you either proud to be British again or wish you were British, which certainly makes a change from the Brits always playing villains.

The audience I was with applauded several times throughout and very loudly at the end. If you enjoyed Kick Ass, like Dr.Who/Sherlock, like James Bond, like comic books or long for the days when movies were made for the kid inside every adult and not just for dumb kids then Kingsman is for you.

I would strongly urge anyone now intending to see it on its US release date of February 13th 2015 to avoid the trailers as much as possible and go in fresh. Your experience will be enhanced greatly. 

Remember the days when trailers didn't spoil the whole first 2 acts of a film?

4 out of 5 bullet proof umbrellas

Children of Men - 28th May 2011

What does this film teach us?
Primarily that people have really really short term memories!

For a film this good to seemingly have been all but forgotten under the vast bottom cough smelling swamp that is modern "churn 'em up and vomit them out" movie making seems to be a bit of an unforgivable crime.

Clive Owen, in the middle of, what I like to call, his grubby trench coat period, stars in what is clearly his best film to date and launched him, to some extent, internationally as the most unlikely of British action heroes, till Liam Neeson took that title later with Taken.

If you don't know the story it is set in the not-too-distant dystopian future where Women are infertile and have been for 18 years, the rest of the world has crumbled and only Britain, just about, survives, although it's a pretty grim fucking place to be.  Clive Owen is the sad-sack office employee who doesn't much care for the life he's leading, except for the occasional breaks in the countryside he takes, visiting his older pot-head, liberal friend played by Michael Caine. Then a blast from the past crops up in the form of Julianne Moore's underground revolutionary and he gets embroiled in an adventure where the whole future of human existence ends up resting in his hands.

The futuristic setting is rendered completely realistically with a stunningly grey and mundane colour palette. Utilising long and seemingly uninterrupted steady cam shots the drama, violence, action and stunning yet grimy visuals are balletic and beautiful and you just completely accept everything you're seeing like it's newsreel from the future.
I can only imagine the choreography or the effects work that went into achieving this result but I suspect it's probably a bit of both. You won't fully appreciate this till about the third time of watching it because the film, the plot, the characters, the acting, the style, the camerawork, everything is just so absorbing, interesting, intricate and exciting that you are picked up and swept along by the whole thing that you barely have time to take a breath and look around at what the editor or director is doing.

It is both a very modern way to approach film making but also seems to have an affinity with the British and European films of the past especially. In the sense that it is a fairly complex, intelligent thriller with realistic violence but a nice air of down to earth irony, spirit and even that very British trait of nonchalance. It also has touches of Terry Gilliam's work, it's like the set designer from Twelve Monkeys and the set designer of Brazil had a cinematic love child.

Now just in case you thought this was all style over substance, because I was banging on about the look of the piece, then don't fear this has all the weighty plot and the first class acting one could require from a film, all tinged with a very dark sense of humour. As it's never explained why the human race went infertile, the film is not really a specific allegory on any one thing and neither is it a cautionary tale, in that way it is sort of pure science fiction as you can read into it anything you want. Basically though, human beings are wasteful, aggressive, bureaucratic bastards and take themselves all way too seriously.

The cast are all brilliant but I am surprised Owen hasn't received some sort of Oscar for mumbling as he has, possibly, one of the most downtrodden and sometimes droney voices ever committed to celluloid but this does mean when he has moments of happiness or moments of emotion and his face and voice come alive, it's all the more powerful.

If you haven't seen it then please rush out, get hold of it and watch it now. Films like this that have a bit of everything in them and actually succeed are a rare breed and when they emerge, seemingly like a fluke, from some, actually talented, little corner of the universe we should make sure they are never forgotten and attain the classic status they so richly deserve.

10 out of 10 puffs of Strawberry Cough
Points from The Wife - 8 out of 10