Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)

Written and Directed by Matthew Vaughn (X- Men: First Class)
Also Written by Jane Goldman
Based on the Graphic Novel by Mark Millar (Wanted)
Starring:
Colin Firth (The King's Speech)
Samuel L. Jackson (Django Unchained)
Mark Strong (Stardust)
Michael Caine (Interstellar)
Jack Davenport (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
Mark Hamill (...Star Wars)
Taron Edgeron 
Sofia Boutella
Sophie Cookson
Richard Brake (Doom)
Hanna Alstrom

We kick off 2015 with a film that was kicked out of 2014 and may well be the tip of this newborn pyramid of a year. I'm talking the best. Already. And yes, I know what the rest of the year holds. Kingsman: The Secret Service is beyond amazing. Its hyperbolicly stylish and carries that lovely Lock, Stock vibe. The violence is horrifyingly giddy, yet beautifully destructive. Limitless in it's ingenuity, the camera is propelled through punches, it swims and zooms elegantly into from gun to gun, fist to fist. We are treated to action that sucks you in with its pulse and vein rupturing kinetics all the while the story somehow managing to be genuinely creative an affectionately touching in its execution. A deft sense of character injects Kingsman with gentle touch of sentimentality to help ground the surreal viciousness of the action. We are left caring about Harry Hart and Eggsy.

In a melding of variously familiar elements, Matthew Vaughn has managed to make a monumental masterpiece of mayhem. Taking the basic Hero's Journey and adding in a hint of Men in Black, a shade of the Matrix, a smattering of spy tropes along with Arthurian vernacular swirled in to make this a thoroughly engrossing product. When Kingsman was at full-throttle insanity (the Church tracking shot),  I was reminded of the best of Edgar Wright's fight scenes from Scott Pilgrim if you mix in the energy of the zombies from World War Z. While containing many standard elements of the average Hero's Journey, Kingsman is also actively working to subvert the conventional pitfalls. There turns you see coming and sudden stops that appear out of nowhere. The film keeps you on a cliff. There are heavy stakes aplenty and there are consequences that roar into effect.

We have an antagonist for the ages and his Number 2 is appropriately unstoppable. With Sam Jackson's Valentine's, the implementation of his plan is flawless in that, much like with Watchmen's all-time great antagonist, there is no stopping him simply because he is better. The question is not whether he will succeed, but rather, what will the heroes do when he does. Valentine joins the ranks of villains like The Dark Knight's Joker, Star Trek Into Darkness' "Khan," The Avenger's Loki, and Skyfall's Silva but unlike them, he doesn't need to get captured for his plan to succeed.

Mark Millar's unhinged story lends perfectly to Vaughn's hyperactive style (As we saw with Kick-A**) and Vaughn, in turn, has that magic touch in selecting and milking the coolest possible performances out of his stars.

We add another triumphant role to Mark Strong's filmography while Colin Firth's performance successfully plants his foot in this decisively unfamiliar territory for the one time regally stuttering Oscar Winner. A report had John Boyega (Attack the Block and the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens) up for the role of Eggsy and, while it may have been refreshing to add a bit of diversity to this quite pale line up of heroes, the job Taron Edgerton does is quite good. He's got the confidence and talent to bring an otherwise standard character a bit of depth. Also, he's listed as 5 feet and 10 inches so it gives me hope to one day do heroically stupid things.

The themes this movie explores are familiar but it still manages to knowingly subvert expectations. There is, remarkably and thankfully, no forced love story. What there is, is a display of friendship and loyalty. Much like Guardians of the Galaxy, we are treated to more complex characters who are motivated by a past that they are haunted by and driven to make choices they must then live with. They are influenced more by their stated goals rather than standard cliches. Again, reminiscent of MIB and Guardians of the Galaxy in that department as well.

Bottom Line: Kingsman hit all the right quavers for me and met each of my unhealthily sadistic expectations. I felt like leaving a tip (were that deemed in any way an acceptable form of showing appreciation to a film whose authors are thousands of miles away). I had this movie pegged to finish at number two behind Del Toro's upcoming effort Crimson Peak and  well ahead of predicted number 4, Star Wars, but now that I've seen this thing? Let's just say that 2015 has it's work cut out.

A resounding 10 out of 10.







SPOILER PIT. Read on at your own peril. 

This is a brutal movie that cares not for your romantic notions of heroism. People die and, in the aftermath, society undoubtedly is brought to is knees. When Valentine personally killed Colin Firth, he succeeded where so many villains have fallen short. He killed THE hero. It was shocking and visibly affected the audience who've come to be babied into thinking the star can't be killed. Also, the amount of people that lose their lives, while hilariously depicted, is no joke, The movie is effective in building a sense of legacy and it does so through death. Killing Eggys dad moments in and the manner in which it happened, was highly impactful. This was followed mere minutes later, yet far in the future, by Lancelot's death. Death was the propellant. The villain, even in death, was, in many ways, victorious. He played the Kingsman and they were backed into a corner, forced to do what they had to but it was a heavy price to pay. That is why this movie is so resonant. It has the guts to go where you would never expect it to. It kills the hero and, as stated earlier, it doesn't shove a love story front and center.  

The Imitation Game (2014)

Directed by Morten Tyldum (Headhunters)
Written by Graham Moore 
Starring:
Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock)
Keira Knightly (Bend It Like Beckham)
Mark Strong (Stardust)
Charles Dance (Game of Thrones)
Matthew Goode (Watchmen)
Allen Leech (Primeval)
Rory Kinnear (Skyfall)
Tuppence Middleton (Trance)

BE ADVISED: The following contains intense gushing praise. 

When The Imitation Game is at full power, your emotions belong to this movie. It takes you completely with its Britishness. Holds you by the face, clutches your cheeks and injects a cold, swirling sense of life into the core of your mind. By the end, The film opens your eyes to a truer history and you walk out to a broken world. Not bad for a biopic. Especially noteworthy is how three timelines all tell one vastly necessary story and each feeds into one another to build a masterpiece. 

Like any masterpiece, this film operates as more than just a drama. It's a war movie, its a biography, its a revisiting to the still relevant horrid hatred of homosexuality. Yes, its about all those serious things, but they can be depressing and bitter when not mixed and treated with a little sugar. The humor and confidence boasted by the cast throughout the film is brilliantly handled, and vitally so. We are never unaware of the perils surrounding Alan Turing and his crew of World War II Enigma code breakers but we are given the positivity to emotionally survive the ordeal through sharp wit and renegadian dialogue. The delivery of those lines make me feel cool just thinking about them. For instance, literally every word out of Mark Strong' s Col. Maj. Stewart Menzies will get a woman pregnant. 

The pinnacle scene where they fracture the enigma is gorgeously handled. A burst of realization sparking in Turing's eye performed like nothing else in the universe mattered, a moment of such euphoric eureka that we, as the audience are enthralled beyond all reason. 

Speaking further to all of the above, Tyldum, in his English language directorial debut, maximizes every bit of tension, humor, and love out of his film. There is even a sense of muted style to the camera work. People are often positioned off center, intentionally keeping your eyes active. Tyldum takes the top screenplay of the 2011 blacklist, and former DeCaprio starring vehicle to wonderful heights. Paired with Cumberbatch, Tyldum honors Turing's memory justly. 

Romance is also capably handled as the it never becomes annoying. The movie sweetly portrays friendship and trust. Showing that we can be more by looking towards others. Knowing that we all need help. The major scene between Knightley and Cumberbatch (Lets go a ahead and add his name to the old Portable Turing Machine's dictionary) that lays their relationship out in the open is as good as it gets. The actors, the score, the direction, the momentum of the entire story, it all swirls into a perfect storm powerful enough to engulf every ounce of attention you have. In that moment I had to break away and look around. I had to see the faces in the crown that were gone, completely absorbed by the screen. Prisoners of the moment in a jail so finely constructed only those whoare waiting for the tide to pass over them can escape. Everyone else belongs to that scene. Belongs to the movie. 

Their relationship is also beautifully summed up by the most important adage of the film:

 "Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."

I think I instantly became a better person the moment after hearing that line. Thankfully it was repeated so that I may more easily remember it. 

Aside from the two leads (albeit one far leadier than the other), this movie benefits from having a supremely talented supporting cast who are allowed to fully flesh out their deeply human roles. Charles Dance is superbly capable and prickly as the Lanniseresque Commander Denniston. Matthew Goode, Allen Leech, and the rest of the code breakers are also immensely effective in their work. Rory Kinnear helps bring meaning to the scenes set in the 50s. Tuppence Middleton also quite nicely maximized her screen time and made her otherwise cliched character be more than it could potentially have been. And lest we forget, the childhood scenes are handled so somberly by Alex Lawther. (Although, I am a bit sad about a lack of Tom Hiddleston who could easily slip in for Matthew Goode. The dream of having him, Cumberbatch, and Strong on screen together must wait. This movie instead joins the ranks of War Horse as another trifecta close call.)

No movie can reach the upper echelon of cinema without a penetrating score. Zimmer's Interstellar set the bar this year and here Alexandre Desplat(Argo) rise to match him. Desplat, who apparently had only three weeks at his disposal, does a philomenal job (Anyone catch that? Philomena...no?) The piano tune is immaculately simple yet profoundly immersive,  Listening to it feels like you're swimming in a field of snow. 

And finally we get to Benedict himself. The absolute, unquestioningly best part of this movie is his performance. He controls the movie from the very first second. His voice....what more can be said. It is a force of nature. A monsoon of deepness that loosens all joints in your body. He is on the list of people that I would like to be yelled at by, right next to Michael Fassbender and Judi Dench. Cumberbatch shows shades of Sherlock here as well with his superb ability to portray characters whose minds are on a different plane of existence. Already the reigning Actor of the Year for 2013, Imitation Game marks him firmly in contention for a repeat win. 

As for the bad stuff...I wish the two adorable elderly ladies to the left of me would've had fewer conversations. God, I love free screening. But seriously, there is severe difficulty in finding any fault here. Scouring the negative reviews of this film leads you to see that the only bad thing is that it is a biopic and some people have watched too many to allow another good biopic to exist. Sadly, I am still in the shallow end of that pool so these eyes have yet to be jaded. Although this did elicit a similar response to watching A Beautiful Mind for the first time, which is yet another positive accolade to bestow on this movie. 

To steal a word from Selina Meyer, this is a robust year for movies. How many times can a film buff allow his top spot to be toppled? We may be looking at the unholy unordered top ten by year's end. You're up Peter Jackson. Good call in having Cumberbatch play two roles in one movie.  

Bottom Line. Stunning performance. Stunning Film. 

10 out of 10.