Guilty Pleasures #40 - Kingsman: The Secret Service

I’m doing it because the sequel’s coming out, sue me

Kingsman: The Secret Service released in 2014 to somewhat mixed reviews but a decent profit, making $400m on a $90m budget. But screw what other people think, I love this movie! But that doesn’t mean I can’t try and analyse it and be nitpicky, let’s dive in

It’s 1997 in some Arabic country or whatever and some castle or something is under siege by our heroes. The capture one of the guards and attempt to interrogate him, but he detonates a suicide vest. One of the agents sacrifices himself to save the others. Harry Heart, played by Colin Firth, goes to the agent’s family to console them, it works about as well as you’d expect. He offers them a favour if they call a number on the back of a medal for valour he presents to them and gives a code phrase to use. When the mother refuses, he gives it to her son, Eggsy. This raises no objections from her whatsoever.

So cut ahead 17 years through a snow-globe to snowy mountains in Argentina. As you would. Mark Hamill is in this movie, he plays a kidnapped scientist known as James Arnold. A man I’m going to call soon-to-be-dead breaks in and kills all the guards, but before he can rescue Mr Arnold, an assassin cuts him in half. That’s a thought I want to forget. We then get the first look at our main villain, Valentine played by Samuel L Jackson. I think he’s legitimately funny in the role but who the f*ck told him that lisp was a good idea?

Harry heads to the Kingsman Tailor on Saville Row, it’s here he meets up with ‘Arthur’ Chester King, played by Michael Caine. They speak to various other agents via hologram spectacles. How this works, don’t know. With the agent soon-to-be-dead now dead, each of them must choose a candidate for his replacement. Harry gets to follow up on the case and we find that James Arnold is now free. Despite the number of missing people still on the rise.

We rejoin Eggsy, now played by Taron Egerton who’s a bit of a 'chav,' as seems to be bloody common, his mother is now with an abusive man, f*ck this character, he also has a gang, f*ck all of them too. He’s set out to get some cigarettes but is given enough money to have a drink with his friends. Because he’s a complete moron, he decides to steal a car from one of the gang members, it results in a police chase where he’s driving in reverse. How? This guy is not Baby from Baby Driver, where did he learn to do this?

So, he gets caught after swerving to avoid a cat, as you do, and ends up in prison. But he makes the phone call and soon Harry is waiting for him upon his release. They go to the same pub and get some exposition about Eggsy’s character. He’s smart but picked up some bad habits from his new step-father. He was a good marine but his mother called him home, wanting him out of the life that killed his father. The same bullies confront them. Harry beats the living daylights out of them (and one of them has a gun, why does he have a gun?) resulting in Eggsy’s father attempting to beat who he was out of Eggsy, unsuccessfully. Fortunately, Harry had implanted a microphone in Eggsy’s jacket and rescues him, inviting him to the Tailor.

Harry offers Eggsy the chance to become a part of the Kingsman, a society formed by heir-less aristocrats after WWI with the objective or preserving peace, WWII must've been quite the failing. It runs secretly and free of the bureaucracy of government. Also, free of accountability, something that could be a major pain in the ass later on.

They use some bullet train in the tailor to head to a mansion, this place is their main base and houses hundreds of vehicles, Eggsy is introduced to the 8 others applying for the mission. Roxy, the only girl who gets more than 1 line, Charlie, Digby and Rufus, who are posh, and Amelia, the girl who only gets one line. What about the other 3? Here’s their detailed backstories

Also, one of them remarks about Eggsy being someone who served them at McDonalds at Winchester Service Station. There isn’t a McDonalds at Winchester Service Station so f*ck you!

Valentine claims he wants to save the planet and we’ll get to this later. He’s near the White House apparently. As the candidates sleep the first test begins, the dorm begins to flood. As Charlie goes to use shower heads in U-bends as air supply, go figure how that works, Eggsy notices the mirror was two-way and smashes through it. But unfortunately, Amelia is dead *cough*right*cough*

Harry confronts James Arnold, I swear I knew someone with that name, no matter. Before he can talk his head explodes remotely, Harry barely escapes an explosion. Never a dull moment in this movie. As a result of this, Valentine orders his plan accelerated, regardless of the cost. Each of the trainee Kingsmen are told to choose a puppy. They are to train it and as their training progresses, so will the training of the dog, in fact, if you judged only by how much Eggsy’s puppy grows, you’d guess the process had taken years but no… Anyway, Eggsy chooses a Pug, thinking it’s a bulldog.

The explosion apparently did some damage to Harry, as he’s now in a coma in the mansion, odd considering he’s somehow at the mansion. Charlie and his gang throw water over Eggsy, because pointless. As the tests continue, with Eggsy showing remarkable marksmanship skills we cut over to a meeting between Valentine and the Prime Minister and Queen/Princess of Sweden. The Prime Minister agrees to his proposition and the Queen/Princess doesn’t, so she’s taken captive but not before the assassin kills her guards. The Prime Minister has a chip implanted in his head.

Eggsy is now in the final 6, the other 2 have been eliminated off-screen. Harry sees the footage and notices a chip in James’ head that caused his head to explode, the signal that triggered it goes back to Valentine’s company, Eggsy shows them that Valentine has just unveiled a new SIM Card for free, unrestricted internet access, with Net Neutrality, of course. They notice Valentine’s assistant has the same implant scar, intriguing Harry enough for him to want a meeting with him.

The next test is Sky Diving. Their objective is to drop right onto the small Kingsman sign on the lawn, not pulling the parachute too high to be stealthy. When they drop, their handler, Merlin, tells them that one of them has no active parachute, Eggsy tries to get everyone to pair up but one of the guys lets his parachute off early in a blind panic. The rest form a circle and deploy one by one, it seems that Eggsy is without a parachute but when they land, it’s revealed he has one and it was just a trick.

Harry arrives at Valentine’s house, he had offered a substantial donation and got a private dinner. Of Product Placement. I know Valentine is supposed to be a bit weird but, come on, put some f*cking effort into it, we've already had a McDonalds plug for f*ck's sake. Valentine’s motivation seems to be environmental, without more drastic measures they’re past the point of no return when it comes to climate change, and no amount of clean air policies will change that. It’s an interesting motivation, to be sure. They talk about spy movies and how they prefer the classic, less serious ones, I have to say, aside from some clichés, me too. So, with a 24-hour tracker implanted in Harry through the wine, Valentine can watch his every move.

Charlie, Roxy and Eggsy are the final 3. Their next test is to charm a target, they all have the same target. All their techniques seem to work but their champagne was drugged. They all find themselves tied to a train track with their captor offering them a knife in exchange for information. Roxy and Eggsy pass this test whilst Charlie is sent packing. At this point, Roxy and Eggsy are allowed time with their respected mentors.

Harry offers to teach Eggsy to become more of a gentleman. He accepts as we see Valentine is being hurt by his own bio-metric security system… of course… There is a stranger in fitting room 1, and they don’t use fitting room 2 because of reasons so we get introduced to fitting room 3, the gadget room. Containing: poison bladed shoes, explosive toxin in a pen, guns with shotgun cartridges, the umbrella Harry used in the opening fight, an electric cygnet ring and explosives.

Turns out the guy in fitting room one was Valentine, there’s some back and forth between him and Harry, Harry recommends, since he’s going to Ascot, to wear a top hat, which we later find out has a bug planted on it.

Eggsy is brought before Arthur, who tells him to shoot the dog. Eggsy refuses and leaves as we hear that Roxy has done so. Eggsy is back in his old outfit, and he notices that whilst he was away she got a black eye. He steal’s Arthur’s car and tries to confront him about it but before he can leave, the car drives itself to Harry. He explains that the bullet was a blank and the dog would not have died, but they needed to test his resolve, the same way Amelia was not killed in the first test.

Merlin makes contact as he’s found something interesting in the audio, a mention of a test at an extremist church in Kentucky, Harry teleports there I think given how fast he was there and is in the church for the test to begin. The signals from the SIM cards make everyone try and kill each other, this is a brutal scene with all the blood and violence a PG-13 movie wouldn’t allow. The only odd choice here is the music, which seems somewhat at odds with the horror show on display, but it might be intentional, to distract the audience.

Harry is the only survivor of the church massacre, he heads outside in horror but finds Valentine waiting for him. After explaining enough of his plan, to cull humanity by using SIM cards to get them to kill each other, Valentine shoots him, standing in horror over his actions (yeah, Valentine doesn't like to kill people directly)

Eggsy quickly drinks to his health before heading to Kingsman to confront Arthur, the confession from Valentine has been recorded and sent to authorities, it’s over. But Eggsy notices the scar in his neck, he has a chip implant. Arthur offers him a drink, but spikes one with the explosive pen we saw earlier. But Eggsy switched the drinks so Arthur dies, Eggsy manages to remove the chip before getting a message saying Armageddon in 6 hours.

He brings the information to Merlin and Roxy, who decide it’s up to the 3 of them to act as the facility has been infiltrated. They have a convenient device that would allow Roxy to launch a rocket at high altitude to destroy a satellite, this would buy the others time to get into the system and shut it down.

They head to the base in Argentina, in less than 6 hours apparently and commence the plan. Valentine’s base is protected by a missile launcher but they use Arthur’s pass to land safely. Eggsy dawns a new suit and uses it to infiltrate a gathering of political leaders and industrialists, all chosen survivors. He orders a complicated drink as is staple in any spy movie. He finds a laptop and uses it to get Merlin online but Charlie is among the ranks and catches him.

Eggsy fights his way back to the plane. After some close shaves, Roxy’s missile hits its mark but Merlin soon realises he can’t hack past bio-metric security. Now Eggsy has to go in armed and make sure Valentine doesn’t realign a satellite to complete his chain. Eggsy ends up cornered with his umbrella shield destroyed but then has an idea. He gets Merlin to remotely detonate all the chips and we get a cartoon of everyone in the building and beyond getting their heads blown off. Why the cartoon? We’ve seen plenty of blood in this movie in the Church scene. None of the other head explosions have been quite this overblown. But it doesn’t matter, Valentine doesn’t have a chip in his head, and neither does the assassin.

The satellite is realigned and a montage continues with people fighting each other and Eggsy’s mother trying to kill a baby, charming. So, now Eggsy has to face off against the assassin, it’s a very good fight, although how Eggsy is this good at avoiding her attacks does escape me given everyone else ends up dead in seconds. Anyway, he uses his poison tipped shoe to kill her, then uses her leg blade to kill Valentine.

Geez, that’s a lot of dead people, regions will be destabilised, riots will occur, the world will never be the same, the 1% is now the 0.01%. But never mind, Eggsy gets to f*ck the Queen/Princess of Sweeden. The End

Not quite as in a post credits scene, Eggsy gets his revenge on his asshole stepfather and his gang by recreating Harry’s fight from the opening.

So that was Kingsman, and it left me grinning ear to ear.

It’s not flawless, I could’ve done with less swearing, though I’m not one to talk, and sometimes the music undercuts a potentially dramatic moment.

I think taking this movie seriously is not the way to go, it’s intention was to be a fun spy movie reminiscent of the old Bond movies, with the odd reference to current spy movies and the violence that only an R-rating can provide.

I wouldn’t look at this politically as some seem to, the environmentalist motivation of Valentine isn’t a stab against all environmentalists, Samuel L Jackson portrays him with an obvious lack of seriousness that it makes me completely forget that. 

Eggsy is a genuinely likeable character, Harry is also and they don’t fall into a trope of having the mentor and mentee constantly argue, speaking of tropes they avoid, there is no convoluted death trap, only a reference of one.

Overall, this is most fun I’ve had watching a movie in some time, we’ll be back to sh*t in due course no doubt though.

Rating -65%