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Matthew Vaughn sure doesn’t make it easy to embrace the old-school vibe of Roger Moore-era James Bond movies—including all the sexism and occasional sadism they included. This adaptation of the graphic novel by Mark Millar (whom Vaughn also adapted in Kick-Ass) casts Colin Firth as Harry “Galahad” Hart, one of a team of self-appointed international do-gooders, who tries to make good on a very personal debt by recruiting wrong-side-of-the-tracks kid Eggsy (Taron Egerton) into the group. They soon find themselves investigating eccentric Internet billionaire Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson, gleefully tearing into his lisping megalomaniac), and Vaughn gets the most out of both his energetic cast and the undeniable genre pleasures of watching stuff like a well-tailored gentlemen take on a henchwoman with swords in her prosthetic legs. But there’s something terribly misjudged tonally in Kingsman’s most over-the-top action set pieces—which set brutal violence to jaunty music as ostensibly good people turn into killing machines—and the off-handed approach to the only female characters. If Vaughn is trying to be subversive about those subjects—as he is far more successfully about classism—he’s being awfully subtle about it.
Official Site: www.kingsmanmovie.com
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Producer: Matthew Vaughn, David Reid, Adam Bohling, Mark Millar, Dave Gibbons, Stephen Marks, Claudia Vaughn and Pierre La Grange
Cast: Colin Firth, Michael Caine, Taron Egerton, Samuel Jackson, Mark Strong, Sofia Boutella, Sophie Cookson, Jack Davenport and Mark Hamill
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Producer: Matthew Vaughn, David Reid, Adam Bohling, Mark Millar, Dave Gibbons, Stephen Marks, Claudia Vaughn and Pierre La Grange
Cast: Colin Firth, Michael Caine, Taron Egerton, Samuel Jackson, Mark Strong, Sofia Boutella, Sophie Cookson, Jack Davenport and Mark Hamill
