‘Kingsman’: Old-School Brit Spies Not Exactly Old-School Gentlemen

“Kingsman: The Secret Service” is the new, old Bond. Yay!
Mark Jackson
Updated:

“Kingsman: The Secret Service” is the new, old Bond. Yay! We'd all grown tired of the twittier aspects of old Bond: the sclerotic formula, sclerotic Q, ancient M, silly villains, silly lewd female names, mildly lewd one-liners, and the ever-increasing Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan banality.

The removal of twit and anchoring in grit, set off by the Jason Bourne films and the further grit-ification of Bond (compliments of Jack Bauer), was enjoyed by no one more than the reviewer.

And yet, now that the old-school Bond archetype is back, we find we’ve missed it. No one does debonair gentleman spies better than the Brits.

The “Bond” franchise can kill two birds with one stone if the next Bond is Idris Elba; they'll have succeeded in keeping the Daniel Craig grit and reinstating the gentlemanly Sean Connery suave.

And this needs to happen. Why? Because “Kingsman,” should it become a franchise (and it has every indication that it will), is not really resurrected Old Bond.

Colin Firth (L) and Taron Egerton exit an underground shuttle to the Kingsmen headquarters. (Twentieth Century Fox/Matthew Vaughn Casting)
Colin Firth (L) and Taron Egerton exit an underground shuttle to the Kingsmen headquarters. Twentieth Century Fox/Matthew Vaughn Casting
Mark Jackson
Mark Jackson
Film Critic
Mark Jackson is the chief film critic for The Epoch Times. In addition to film, he enjoys martial arts, motorcycles, rock-climbing, qigong, and human rights activism. Jackson earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Williams College, followed by 20 years' experience as a New York professional actor. He narrated The Epoch Times audiobook "How the Specter of Communism is Ruling Our World," available on iTunes, Audible, and YouTube. Mark is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic.
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