Hart of the matter

If you like violence, loads of it, if you have the stomach for gut and gore, if you liked the witty, irreverent spy movies of old and, finally, if you’ve always dreamt of seeing Colin Firth in dapper suits, umbrella in hand, with a posh accent, beating the s*** out of people, then Kingsman: The Secret Service is a must-watch. Since I subscribe to all of the above, the movie ticked all the right boxes for me.

Director Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons’s comic book series is a love letter to spy films — from incredible gadgets (an umbrella that stuns, a lighter that is a hand grenade, a pen that can administer poison), suit fetishes and the Harry Palmer-like glasses, to the James Bond-like double entendres, an over-the-top villain, and, of course, Harry Palmer himself leading the Kingsman, an ‘international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion’, erm, I meant Michael Caine. But apart from the references to spy flicks, this film is pure Vaughn, and gleefully so, from the cheek, to the humour, the filth, the violence and the underlying message — unlike the recent Bond films and just like his Kick-Ass, which was a welcome move away from the dark, serious and low-on-fun superhero flicks. 

And while the cameo by Mark Hamill (that is Luke Skywalker for all you Star Wars-illiterate people), the presence of Mark Strong and a fantastic performance by Taron Egerton, who plays the leading role of Eggsy, it was Firth’s Harry Hart — Henry Higgins to Eggsy’s Eliza Doolittle — that stole the show for me.

If hearing Firth cussing while wearing a Savile Row suit, Oxford shoes and brandishing an umbrella gave me butterflies in the stomach, Firth calmly incapacitating a passel of young men in a pub where he starts by saying “manners maketh man” and finishes it off with a “sorry about that, I needed to let off steam” is enough to give you a *gulp*! And he is the centrepiece of one of the most brutal action sequences where he goes on a rampage, shooting, stabbing, strangling, blowing up and impaling people in true Vaughn style and you are left slack-jawed with awe. I don’t condone violence, it is just that I never thought I would live to see the day Colin Firth was going to be at the heart of a scene like this. Nor can I forget the climactic battle where heads explode like Diwali fireworks and Holi water balloons! Repeat, I don’t condone violence, it was just a visual spectacle!

Never mind not being Bond Mr Firth, you have given us something just as incredible and way more fun. I, for one, am eternally grateful to Vaughn for giving us Firth as Harry Hart and for making a film that is exhilarating, not entirely morally correct and absolutely, gleefully entertaining, once again. 

Chandreyee Chatterjee
Did you like Colin Firth as Harry Hart? Tell us why at t2@abp.in