In one of its advertisements, “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” is described as “Quentin Tarantino meets James Bond.” I generally didn’t see that.
This movie tries to be a kinda-sorta action-spy movie but falls flat plotwise once you figure out the evil scheme. But if you don’t care about the plot or the sub-par graphics, it is a decent movie to watch with some popcorn and a soda. Come for the hammy acting of Colin Firth and Samuel L. Jackson, stay for the accents and a scene where Mr. Firth kills an entire hate group in a church with a bulletproof umbrella gun.From here on in, spoilers will commence.
In “Kingsman” our hero, Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (played by Taron Egerton), is recruited by Harry Hart (Colin Firth), an agent of the Secret Service Kingsman, who taught Gary’s father and was present when the senior Unwin was killed. As Eggsy goes through training, an evil plot is discovered, which is orchestrated by Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson, who fluctuates from not caring about the role to being extremely semi-invested). Can Eggsy and the other Kingsman (and by other, I mean the only three or four agents who seem available) save the world from this terrorist?
Valentine’s plan is one of the weaker and most annoying and inconceivable plots I’ve seen this year. Here it is in a nutshell: Valentine is a huge media mogul and innovative mind (think: the love child of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg with a comical lisp) who believes in the idea of the Gaia Theory, which holds that humanity is doomed no matter what we do. He believes neither money nor good will can save us from destroying the environment. So his solution is to conduct mass genocide on everyone he feels is unfit to survive. His plan is to give away free SIM cards for phones and media devices, which come with unlimited and free wifi, phone calls and texts. The catch is that the cards emit, for lack of a better word, “hate waves” that make people want to kill each other. Only those people who live on Valentine’s base or have a survival chip in their necks can survive. How does he implant the safety cards? He tells them his plan. That’s right. He tells them.
Imagine, if you will, that you are the president. You are greeted by the biggest technological celebrity who apparently can monopolize the entire media industry if he wanted. He invites you over and sits you down with his amputee henchwoman/maid Gazelle. After a fancy dinner, he tells you that he is going to conduct mass genocide on a global scale, and that you, along with your cabinet members, can survive and live in the “New Age.” Would you say yes? Apparently you would, according to the movie.
If I had a tagline for this, it would be “Never have I seen all the heads of all the world’s governments explode in such nonchalant and boring fashion with seemingly no repercussion!”
The main character Eggsy is such a paint-by-numbers teen “thug with a heart of gold” hero, and everyone else besides Samuel Jackson is so bland and one-dimensional that the villain’s plot is the one thing that amazed me. Unfortunately, it was for all the wrong reasons.
Josh Wilson is a senior at Evanston Township High School