(Matthew Vaughn, 2015)
Kingsman makes sure that you know it has the James Bond films in mind from early on, and there are several explicit references. But this film, based on a comic book, accordingly takes a much more comic book angle on the material, making everything even bigger and broader and sillier than most Bond films usually go. It even has a dig at modern 007 - too serious, apparently - and so here that serious nature is replaced by ludicrous action scenes and some lame gags. It actually bears more resemblance to the recent G.I. Joe films than any Bond movies.
The story follows young petty criminal Eggsy (Taron Egerton) after he is saved from prison by Galahad (Firth), an agent of the titular organisation. Firth sponsors him to enter the recruitment process for a new Kingsman, run by Merlin (Mark Strong) while he investigates the scheme cooked up by Internet Billionaire Valentine (Samuel L Jackson). That scheme involves culling the majority of earth's population, and gives rise to one impressive action sequence, where Firth's dapper, old-school agent kills about two dozen people in a berserker fury. Like all of the action scenes here, that one is almost ruined by an over-reliance on CGI, and throughout the film flirts with being a tasteless and embarrassing mess. It has a particular weakness for the obvious; from the choice of music to the product placement to the action beats to the gags, there is nothing surprising or witty here, just a whole lot of boxes being ticked. Some of those boxes work and are undeniably satisfying to watch; others are cringe-inducing and eye-rollingly dumb.
There is also a streak of class warfare running through the plot, with prole Eggsy taking on the Oxbridge Elite and showing them that a pleb can have what it takes, but even that is messy, what with the way the film fetishises upper-class British culture.
The performances barely matter, but Jackson and Firth have fun, while Egerton does what he needs to do. It is massively overlong, but scattered sequences are enjoyable and funny.
Showing posts with label Colin Firth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colin Firth. Show all posts
Friday, 6 February 2015
Saturday, 17 September 2011
TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY
(Tomas Alfredson, 2011)
Beyond the perfection of the costumes - all those tweedy suits, starched shirts and heavy fabric coats - and the beautiful drabness of the production design in general, what effortlessly establishes the atmosphere of London in 1973 in Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of John LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is the grain. Graininess in the image provides immediate texture and suggests a period setting, while also hinting at the fog these characters operate in, straining to see one another and identify motivations across gloomy, smoke-filled rooms.
This spy game story is quite stunningly directed by Alfredson; thick with mood and a vivid sense of its various places - from chilly, paranoid Cold War Budapest to a seedy Istanbul - and full of memorable images and compositions, this is the work of a director who has a muscular sense of the power of cinema.
Tracing the effort of ousted spymaster George Smiley to find the mole at the top of British Intelligence, the plot is revealed mainly through a long series of hesitant, loaded conversations. Characters speak little but say much, requiring strong work from a dazzling cast of British actors, amongst whom Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch and Mark Strong register most forcibly. Gary Oldman delivers his best work in years, reining in that explosive energy he usually surfs through empty roles upon. Here instead he seems bowed and tired, his quiet routine portrayed in an early montage by Alfredson which tells us all we need to know about this man without a word of dialogue. Indeed, Smiley does not speak forthe first fofteen minutes of the film, and yet we watch him and assess. His power as an actor is translated into the intelligence we can see behind his glasses and the pain one particular betrayal explodes inside him, communicated only in a sort of strained expression and a barely perceptible sagging of the shoulders. He has two scenes which are more obviously spectacular: a long monologue about his single encounter with Karla, the Russian Spymaster who is Smiley's nemesis, and his final encounter with the unmasked mole, wherein he raises his voice - almost shockingly - for the first time.
The set-pieces are few but effortlessly gripping, and the oh-so-English atmosphere of repressed emotion, of strong feelings never exposed, means that the seismic vibrations under the surface of these characters becomes peculiarly moving as the story progresses. This is a tale of ruined people and doomed romantic notions as much as it is of political machination and secret plotting, and it delivers a strong, almost unexpected emotional charge.
That is mainly down to that exceptional cast and Alfredson's direction, greatly assisted by Hoyte van Hoytema's fabulous photography, which is so strong on texture and detail. I came away with certain small images in my head, the sort of detail that makes a world live onscreen: the scratch of a knife buttering toast, the misty shock of Smiley's morning swim in Hampstead, glasses and hair perfectly in place, the drip of a bead of sweat from a waiters brow onto a table-cloth, the glassy light of the US intelligence bulding in stark contrast to the Circuses colourless dullness, and finally; all these alpha male faces in close-up, evaluating, hiding, plotting.
This is the spy thriller as art house drama, but it succeeds in both regards. Stylish, gripping, quietly devastating, it's a stunning piece of cinema.
Beyond the perfection of the costumes - all those tweedy suits, starched shirts and heavy fabric coats - and the beautiful drabness of the production design in general, what effortlessly establishes the atmosphere of London in 1973 in Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of John LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is the grain. Graininess in the image provides immediate texture and suggests a period setting, while also hinting at the fog these characters operate in, straining to see one another and identify motivations across gloomy, smoke-filled rooms.
This spy game story is quite stunningly directed by Alfredson; thick with mood and a vivid sense of its various places - from chilly, paranoid Cold War Budapest to a seedy Istanbul - and full of memorable images and compositions, this is the work of a director who has a muscular sense of the power of cinema.
Tracing the effort of ousted spymaster George Smiley to find the mole at the top of British Intelligence, the plot is revealed mainly through a long series of hesitant, loaded conversations. Characters speak little but say much, requiring strong work from a dazzling cast of British actors, amongst whom Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch and Mark Strong register most forcibly. Gary Oldman delivers his best work in years, reining in that explosive energy he usually surfs through empty roles upon. Here instead he seems bowed and tired, his quiet routine portrayed in an early montage by Alfredson which tells us all we need to know about this man without a word of dialogue. Indeed, Smiley does not speak forthe first fofteen minutes of the film, and yet we watch him and assess. His power as an actor is translated into the intelligence we can see behind his glasses and the pain one particular betrayal explodes inside him, communicated only in a sort of strained expression and a barely perceptible sagging of the shoulders. He has two scenes which are more obviously spectacular: a long monologue about his single encounter with Karla, the Russian Spymaster who is Smiley's nemesis, and his final encounter with the unmasked mole, wherein he raises his voice - almost shockingly - for the first time.
The set-pieces are few but effortlessly gripping, and the oh-so-English atmosphere of repressed emotion, of strong feelings never exposed, means that the seismic vibrations under the surface of these characters becomes peculiarly moving as the story progresses. This is a tale of ruined people and doomed romantic notions as much as it is of political machination and secret plotting, and it delivers a strong, almost unexpected emotional charge.
That is mainly down to that exceptional cast and Alfredson's direction, greatly assisted by Hoyte van Hoytema's fabulous photography, which is so strong on texture and detail. I came away with certain small images in my head, the sort of detail that makes a world live onscreen: the scratch of a knife buttering toast, the misty shock of Smiley's morning swim in Hampstead, glasses and hair perfectly in place, the drip of a bead of sweat from a waiters brow onto a table-cloth, the glassy light of the US intelligence bulding in stark contrast to the Circuses colourless dullness, and finally; all these alpha male faces in close-up, evaluating, hiding, plotting.
This is the spy thriller as art house drama, but it succeeds in both regards. Stylish, gripping, quietly devastating, it's a stunning piece of cinema.
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
THE KINGS SPEECH
(Tom Hooper, 2009)
Colin Firth is the undisputed master of one type. If you have a character who's a repressed Brit, either Upper or Middle Class, displaying a classic case of stiff upper lip but with more violent passions running deeper beneath, then Firth is your man. Looking at his entire career, the films in which he does not play such a character can probably be counted on one hand.
He's played that role to death, won awards for it, done all he can with it. It's time he did something else, time he stretched himself. Play a drug dealer, a super villain. Do something, do anything, else.
Here he plays King George VI, engaging Geoffrey Rush's slightly eccentric speech therapist to aid in his battle with a stammer just as his brother abdicates the throne and he is forced to speak in public on a regular basis. He is predictably excellent, suggesting the buried anger and complexity of a man facing his own demons in public and for high stakes through the tiniest facial tremors and shifts of expression, his body language constricted and tense throughout. Rush is just as good, his colonial presence vital as perhaps the films only means of puncturing the pomposity of the British Royal family and all the ceremony surrounding it.
The film works best as a sort of a buddy movie about their two characters complete with a feelgood ending, and it has a fine supporting cast of British, Irish and Australian character actors (Timothy Spall as Churchill, Guy Pearce as the abducting David, Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon, Jennifer Ehle) with Helena Bonham Carter particularly perfect as the Queen Mother, but director Hooper comes close to ruining it with some of his visual choices.
He favours frames with the characters - especially Firth's Bertie - isolated in the lower third, generally in a corner, an ocean of space stretching away from them. In some of the two-shots the ceilings fill half the frame in what seems almost parodic of Citizen Kane, and he uses wide angle and fish-eye lenses far more than is healthy for any film. All of this serves to tell us how isolated and pressurised Bertie is - how much is pressing down on him from above - while also functioning as a sort of visual metaphor for a stammer, echoing the frustration by leaving the image "unfinished" or cut off. In a few scenes it might have been effective, but Hooper leans on these devices so consistently that they become tiresome and almost laughable.
The script is solid and old-fashioned; it works and does what it sets out to do, and it really doesn't need this sort of rudimentary trickery to elevate it.
Indeed, Hooper's desire to elevate it is perhaps the best evidence of it's essential triteness. With its mythologising of a minor episode in Britsh history and glorification of a monarch, this is a scrupulously middle-brow film. Which explains much of it's Awards success.
Colin Firth is the undisputed master of one type. If you have a character who's a repressed Brit, either Upper or Middle Class, displaying a classic case of stiff upper lip but with more violent passions running deeper beneath, then Firth is your man. Looking at his entire career, the films in which he does not play such a character can probably be counted on one hand.
He's played that role to death, won awards for it, done all he can with it. It's time he did something else, time he stretched himself. Play a drug dealer, a super villain. Do something, do anything, else.
Here he plays King George VI, engaging Geoffrey Rush's slightly eccentric speech therapist to aid in his battle with a stammer just as his brother abdicates the throne and he is forced to speak in public on a regular basis. He is predictably excellent, suggesting the buried anger and complexity of a man facing his own demons in public and for high stakes through the tiniest facial tremors and shifts of expression, his body language constricted and tense throughout. Rush is just as good, his colonial presence vital as perhaps the films only means of puncturing the pomposity of the British Royal family and all the ceremony surrounding it.
The film works best as a sort of a buddy movie about their two characters complete with a feelgood ending, and it has a fine supporting cast of British, Irish and Australian character actors (Timothy Spall as Churchill, Guy Pearce as the abducting David, Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon, Jennifer Ehle) with Helena Bonham Carter particularly perfect as the Queen Mother, but director Hooper comes close to ruining it with some of his visual choices.
He favours frames with the characters - especially Firth's Bertie - isolated in the lower third, generally in a corner, an ocean of space stretching away from them. In some of the two-shots the ceilings fill half the frame in what seems almost parodic of Citizen Kane, and he uses wide angle and fish-eye lenses far more than is healthy for any film. All of this serves to tell us how isolated and pressurised Bertie is - how much is pressing down on him from above - while also functioning as a sort of visual metaphor for a stammer, echoing the frustration by leaving the image "unfinished" or cut off. In a few scenes it might have been effective, but Hooper leans on these devices so consistently that they become tiresome and almost laughable.
The script is solid and old-fashioned; it works and does what it sets out to do, and it really doesn't need this sort of rudimentary trickery to elevate it.
Indeed, Hooper's desire to elevate it is perhaps the best evidence of it's essential triteness. With its mythologising of a minor episode in Britsh history and glorification of a monarch, this is a scrupulously middle-brow film. Which explains much of it's Awards success.
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