Kingsman: The Secret Service
* *
The film lost me at the church full of hate-mongers. Started out great. Very fun and clever and a nice-looking film. Colin Firth and Sam Jackson are clearly enjoying the eccentricities of their characters. They have a fancy dinner consisting of McDonalds, which is either a sly bit of product placement or an ad so blatant it's funny. (Firth ends the evening by saying, "Thank you for the happy... meal." It's perfect.) The darkness Matthew Vaughn enjoys too much blips up now and then, but just blips.
Then there's a scene involving dogs and firearms. The dark clouds move in, but the acting during and after give the incident dramatic weight and I move on. The problem with that church scene is that the explanation is very late in coming. It's a showpiece of violence involving people you can hate, but wouldn't wish this kind of sadistic destruction upon. It's not cool and you don't root for anyone, including the Kingsman. It's all wrong because it goes on well past the point. The film pauses to take in the carnage. It becomes a geek show of CG violence.
Drained the cool right out of the film, leaving it hollow. All the spy action that followed carried with it the bad taste of that church scene, and added new mistakes. The female member of the team is given a side mission placing her nowhere near the final action. (Rooting from the sidelines.) Carnage set to disco says one thing, but cutting to a mother attempting to butcher her crying child says the opposite. "Manners maketh man," is a key phrase in the film. Matthew Vaughn shows a distinct lack of them.
(For those that listen to Kermode, he's right about the joke at the end, but there are equally wrongheaded blunders in what could've been the launch of a terrific franchise.)