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Kingsman: The Secret Service
Mar. 6th, 2015 11:53 amLast night I went off to the cinema on my own, to see Kingsman.
I had mixed feelings about the movie before going in.
I’ve largely avoided Mark Millar since the nasty taste left in my mouth by the last page of Wanted. The overt message that he can take your money for fulfilling your power fantasies (oh, ok, that he can feck you up the *rse and you’ll be happy about it) didn’t really sit well with me. That means I didn’t actually get to read the rape scene in Kick Ass 2, so I can only be outraged about that by proxy.
On the other hand, Kingsman is a comic book adaption with an interesting cast and premise, so I wanted to see it.
Having seen the movie, I’m still ambivalent. There are lots of good things about it – it’s funny in spots, it has some gripping scenes (the sky-diving sequence in particular) and some excellent dialogue. There are also some bad things in there – a clumsy anal sex joke, a gratuitous lisp, Mark Strong’s ludicrous accent – but they don’t spoil the movie.
What I do think spoils it is a failure in tone, which reminded my painfully of Casino Royale (no, not the Daniel Craig version, the one with David Niven). The writers and director are far too canny for this to have been accidental, but it makes the climax an uncomfortable stab at hard-boiled farce, which didn’t come off for me.
Oh, and I’ve seen a few articles saying that the movie is an admission that the working class need aristocrats to save them – given that the body count includes just about every example of the elite, chosen few, I think this is a bit of a muddled conclusion.
I had mixed feelings about the movie before going in.
I’ve largely avoided Mark Millar since the nasty taste left in my mouth by the last page of Wanted. The overt message that he can take your money for fulfilling your power fantasies (oh, ok, that he can feck you up the *rse and you’ll be happy about it) didn’t really sit well with me. That means I didn’t actually get to read the rape scene in Kick Ass 2, so I can only be outraged about that by proxy.
On the other hand, Kingsman is a comic book adaption with an interesting cast and premise, so I wanted to see it.
Having seen the movie, I’m still ambivalent. There are lots of good things about it – it’s funny in spots, it has some gripping scenes (the sky-diving sequence in particular) and some excellent dialogue. There are also some bad things in there – a clumsy anal sex joke, a gratuitous lisp, Mark Strong’s ludicrous accent – but they don’t spoil the movie.
What I do think spoils it is a failure in tone, which reminded my painfully of Casino Royale (no, not the Daniel Craig version, the one with David Niven). The writers and director are far too canny for this to have been accidental, but it makes the climax an uncomfortable stab at hard-boiled farce, which didn’t come off for me.
Oh, and I’ve seen a few articles saying that the movie is an admission that the working class need aristocrats to save them – given that the body count includes just about every example of the elite, chosen few, I think this is a bit of a muddled conclusion.
