Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from March, 2015

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Abandon all thought, ye who enter here.  And squeamishness as well.  If you share any such distaste for bloodshed with the film's villain Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), best to check that at the door.  The body count is steep in Kingsman:  The Secret Service , although the violence is increasingly cartoonish as the film proceeds giddily through its 129 minutes of mayhem.  At the helm with a steady hand, an iron stomach and no qualms apparent is Englishman Matthew Vaughn. Surprisingly, "Kingsman" is loosely based on a comic book.  Not on a Chekhov short story, as one might assume.  The comic series in question is The Secret Service, by Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar.  Early in the graphic proceedings, an environmental scientist, Mark Hamill (yes, the same) is kidnapped.  The real Hamill, looking a bit like Eddie Izzard's ill-used older brother, is present in "Kingsman" too, as climate scientist James Arnold, held in Argentina by Valentine and his