Kingsman

Director Matthew Vaughan and co-screenwriter Jane Goldman have an unblemished record so far, but the quality level drops a bit here. Their latest collaboration isn't a bad film, but it more chugs along as opposed to being a solid watch all the way through. The set-up is fairly standard as we follow the recruitment of an, err, chav (Eggsy – played by Taron Egerton), into a secret spy organisation and then further into saving-the-world plot shenanigans. I can’t recall a film I’ve seen recently that’s as hit and miss as this one, almost to the point that it could depend when you see it during the week. If it’s on a Friday night, you’ll laugh heartily at a gag involving McDonalds. If you see it on a Monday, you won’t see a gag, just abysmal product placement. Vaughan and Goldman’s film is clearly a subversive take on Bond, but it doesn’t really work in that sense, unlike say, what Kick-Ass was to superhero films. Best just to enjoy this then for the daftness that it is. A nice meta conversation between Colin Firth (as Eggsy's handler / mentor) and Samuel L. Jackson (as the big bad) gives a wink to the audience that none of this should be taken seriously – indeed, when a key scene involves a lot of people’s heads exploding to the backdrop of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance, you know you’re on Silly Street. On that note though, the tone of the film is unbalanced throughout, with exhibit A being the now infamous anal sex banter (which has been cut from subsequent versions). Vaughan is an accomplished director mind, and for the cineastes out there he employs a trick here of centrally framing the entire film (though the pan shots did remind me of a certain W. Anderson). That trick does go out of the window though (along with a number of bloody bodies) in an astonishing scene of violent carnage featuring Firth in a church, which is a head spinning mash up of John Woo’s Hard Boiled and Gareth Edwards The Raid. It’s unlikely you’ll see anything like it this year. On the acting front, the aforementioned Firth plays an English gentleman (quite a stretch, that), old Vaughan alumni Mark Strong appears, but for some reason has to act with a barely interminable Scottish accent, and the less said about Jackson’s lisping villain the better. Rating: 7/10.