I love anything Vaughn has directed so far. From the slick gangster flick Layer Cake, to the absolutely wonderful and charming Stardust. Vaughn also directed my favourite Marvel film X-Men: First Class.
I also cannot forget the modern cult classic Kick-Ass.
The London born director always manages to surprise me with whatever project he is part of. One thing especially is that he does not sanitize his films to appeal to the younger audience, like other big actions films are doing. He stick to his guns and keeps at the rating it should be (15). Now, we have a spy thriller with a few of Britain's best actors leading the way. It is also his third consecutive film that is based off a comic (preceding Kick-Ass and X-Men).
Well firstly, you can clearly see from the start that we are watching a Matthew Vaughn film. The action is non-stop and the characters look like they have just leaped out from a graphic novel.
As we are romping along, the action is enjoyable but not all of the gags were working for me. Thankfully, the action set-pieces were not failing and I was starting to see that this could be Vaughn just having fun with the spy genre.
Then the final act is Vaughn going completely and utterly bonkers. This is his "I don't care" moment and everything is turned up to eleven. If it was any other director, it would look rather silly. But Vaughn always gives it a bit of class, and the final scene shows how much love he has for the old spy thrillers and ends it on an amusing note.
The references to the old Bond films are there for all to see. Even the poster is identical to For Your Eyes Only. It felt like it was a deconstruction of your classic Bond spy thriller, particularly a Roger Moore one. There are moments and even lines in the film that are basically saying "let's put on a party for the classic Bond's". Yet despite all the winks to spy thrillers, there is one clear reference to The Shining, which felt odd to me but still pretty cool.
None of the performances are going to win any awards, but they do the job well. Colin Firth is a great screen presence as always and is probably his most bad-ass, Mark Strong is a solid support, Samuel L. Jackson delivers and Michael Ciane is...... well, Michael Caine. But the real star is newcomer Taron Egerton. He gives us an energetic vibe that makes his character really enjoyable to watch. There is also a nice surprise appearance from an actor many people will love to see back on the big screen.
Soundtracks for Vaughn's films to have been regularly composed by Henry Jackman, and he is back for another score. It is an absolute belter. He is becoming one of my favourite composers at the moment. Keep it up Mr. Jackman.
The only things I would criticise was that some of the gags did not quite work and just generally awkward. Also, a lot of the minor characters felt a bit weak for me. I could mention more negatives, but since the director was purposefully not making this a serious feature, then he can get away with everything else.
Fans of full-on-action will love this. It has that great mix of roller-coaster moments of action, comedy and espionage. It may be bonkers, but it is fun. It is utter mayhem, with snappy one-liners with a bright and loud soundtrack stamped all over it.
In the end, I see this as Vaughn's weakest work, but I think he never intentionally tried to surpass his previous material. You can tell that he just wanted to blow things up and go to town with it. I like it that he never took this seriously and just made it fun, completely over-the-top and have a cartoonish style to it that any enjoyable spy thriller should be.
Like every Vaughn film it is never short of violence. He is known for making his films a 15, where you would think it would do well as a 12. But his ballsy attitude gives it that 'guts and guns' tone that is becoming his party piece. Given the calibre of talent on show, the over-the-top moments do not seem as cheesy or trashy as other generic action films.
Instead, it is a nice mash-up of homage to the classics and just having fun with the subject matter. But, it also gives us something new that recent actions films do not have.
Rating: 7/10
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