Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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24 UCW MARCH 25-31, 2015 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM British Class Warfare Kingsman: The Secret Service (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS When I sat down to watch Kingsman: The Secret Service (129 minutes) I knew it was directed by Matthew Vaughn, of X-Men: First Class. I somehow forgot that he also wrote and directed the kickass adaptation from the comic books by Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar, who apparently also wrote the comic The Secret Service, upon which Kingsman is based. Also, Jane Goldman, frequent Vaughn collaborator, is in this mix. What I am trying say is, this movie has a fun pedigree. Also, it is the unapologetic and gleeful child of James Bond and Quentin Tarantino, which some people are destined to hate within minutes of the film's opener! About that opener … starting the film with a "hero" torturing a tied-up guy might have sent the wrong message. Galahad (Colin Firth) pretty consistently makes ter- rible choices, and yet expects unquestioning obedience from his underlings, such as new recruit Eggsy (Taron Egerton). Eggsy gets tapped to join The Kingsman after a series of bad choices land him in jail, resulting in him calling in a favor owed to his dead father. This, when you think about it, makes absolutely no sense. In what world does chronic dropout + emotional mess + chip on the shoulder + criminal mischief = Secret Service material? Although, given the surprising number of whoopsies by America's Secret Service (both domestic and international) maybe my ideas about the kind of personalities recruited to protect and serve are a tad unrealistic. After his recruitment to the titular Kingsman, along with nine guys and two girls (and one of those girls didn't even count) the story transitions to a training mon- tage, interrupted by occasional class warfare. The training of Eggsy is interspersed with quick flashes of supervillain Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), who apparently figured the character should be the polar opposite of Jules in Pulp Fiction. In terms of the Bond pastiche motif, making the supervillain wear stupid bright colors, stupider hats, and giving him a lisp ranks at the bottom of the barrel, below the Bond villain whose tragic flaw was having no earlobes. In fact, the character ranks worse than two out of three Austin Powers movie supervillains. His henchperson, the female Oscar Pistorius, AKA Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) is way cooler. The recruits are steadily whittled down via challenges that are less about getting the job done and more about how they get done. Of course, our hero makes it to the very end of the training, only to wash out because he won't follow orders and shoot a dog. I don't know about the rest of my fellow Americans, but I really do prefer non-dog killing heroes. I was expecting the failure to shoot the dog just because being ordered to do so to would result in graduation to real Kingsman, while the person who actually did shoot their dog would be immediately kicked out because they were a follower instead of a leader. And that is not the only time I was left wondering who to root for. All things considered, it is completely glorious and weird, and I'm glad it's doing such good box office; even though I decry some of the insistence on objectifying women (that last save-the-world-get-the-girl-prize joke is a doozy. And it didn't work. And that actress delivered the line in such a weird way.) Bottom line; I love writer-director Vaughn for so many reasons, but Jennifer Lawrence aside, I don't think he likes women or liberals very much. By way of evidence, note that President Obama is among the genocidal world leaders in cahoots with Valentine. HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200.