Kingsman: The Secret Service

Colin Firth is...Colin Firth, same as always. But that's a good thing, isn't it? We haven't got totally fed up of his suave Britishness like we did Hugh Grant's stumble-bumble Britishness. Not yet. Anyway, he's a spy but it's not a government run thing, it's a secret society known as Kingsmen. But otherwise it's basically Bond with a junior Bond storyline thrown in for good measure.

Which is where Taron Egerton comes in with his kind of odd name as though he's American or made it up but he's actually like well chavvy n that. In this movie. When he's being Eddie the Eagle he's not chavvy. But he is much dumber. Lovably dumber. The Brits love a plucky loser. Wonder why more of us don't like Donald Trump, then?

Anyway (again), lost my train of thought there (again). Yup, Firth owes Egerton (even his surname sounds made up) a favour as he was present when the teenager's dad died during final training to become a cool spy. So he throws him a chance to do the same training and maybe die during the final part of it.

Michael Caine is the boss but don't get excited, he's emailing most of his performance in. Some young posho types are also in the training which we see scenes from alternating with an escalating plot involving the deaths, disappearances and some form of control over influential people of the world. Behind this scheme is Samuel L. Jackson but channelling Will.i.am for some reason. Trigger warning, one scene contains a very, very bad pun at the expense of McDonald's.

Egsy (Egerton's character has almost as odd a name as he does in real life but it's ok as it's a nickname), goes through various rites of passage scenarios. Yes they're faintly predictable but this isn't a movie trying to reinvent the wheel. This is a Matthew Vaughn film which from the off should lead you to expect some high class violence without too much gore and a better sense of humour than Guy Ritchie's films have displayed since Snatch. Much of the best violence comes from Jackson's henchwoman, Sofia Boutella.

End of the world as we know it scenario for the climax?  But of course. That's what we want from our spy films. Oh and for Michael Caine to say the word 'fuck' in that peerless guttural way of his. Does the world end? Does Samuel L Jackson get away with it or does he get thwarted by some pesky kids? Let's just say there's a sequel in the planning. Which is a good thing.

The World Is Not Enough

Remember when Bond movies were camp, creaky festivals of explosions, humping and neo-pantomime villainous henchmen? Bond was humping a succession of women half his age, by the way, not the henchmen. We knew no better: Roger Eyebrows had set the template after taking over from Sean Toupee, Timothy Welsh had failed to shift the franchise into the 80s, Pierced Brosnan settled for somewhere between Eyebrows and Toupee with added grunting whenever he got hurt.

The biggest innovation of the Brosnan years was Judi Dench as M. The worst notion was John Cleese as replacement for Desmond Llewelyn's Q. And the invisible car but that's the next film. This one has Sophie Marceau as an Eastern European with a French voice, Robert Carlyle as an Eastern European with a little bit too much of a Scottish voice, Denise Richards with an unnaturally large chest and Robbie Coltrane with the same problem as Carlyle.

Oil, nuclear material, submarines, skiing, shagging, betrayal, caviar, destroyed cars, the Millennium Dome, shagging, grunting, far too many repetitions of the line 'Bond, James Bond', innuendo with Moneypenny, M in danger, gambling, shagging...yup, it's a pre-Craig Bond film.

And it's ok. Just ok. It's not Goldfinger; it's not even Goldeneye. Garbage recorded the theme tune but the real garbage would come with Brosnan's next and final outing as 007, Die Another Day. When the writers resort to invisible cars and the peak of the special effects is a dreadfully obvious CGI sequence of tsunami surfing it's time for things to change. Thankfully they did and Daniel Craig stepped in to drag Bond properly into the new century.

Mission Impossible 2

Person in slow motion sliding across the floor sideways whilst firing two handguns. Check. Antagonist and protagonist hurtling towards one another on motorbikes like medieval knights charging their steeds in a joust. Check. Explosions in contained spaces. Check. A billion bullets flying about a small room without ever actually hitting anyone. Check. This must be a John Woo movie.

It is. If you watch it on DVD, somewhere in the extras Tom Cruise offers a fascinating insight into the directorial philosophy of the master of the hard-boiled action movie when he reveals that "He's the Woo!" Thanks Tom, I feel enlightened.

Dougray Scott is an MI agent gone rogue. Thandie Newton is gorgeousness in various dresses and handy with some nifty driving and thieving. A manufactured super virus is up for sale to the highest bidder and Ethan Hunt must ignore the possibility of his name being used as rhyming slang and destroy the samples before Scott gets his hand on them.

Whoops, not quite all destroyed. There is one left when the bullets begin to really fly. So Thandie injects it into herself. Silly woman, she's got twenty hours left to live, no antidote as that is in the hands of the prospective buyer, and Cruise hasn't killed Scott yet.

Helicopters, flash bombs, masks to pretend to be somebody else, the motorbike stuff, exploding cars, trucks crashing into things, massive martial arts flavoured fist fight on the beach. It's all here, but becomes just an endless parade of implausible spectacle making the end credits something of a relief. As is the fact that Cruise gets the antidote to Newton in time. Sort of. Might have been a darkly shocking ending if she'd just died.

Yeah, yeah, it's all beautifully filmed, the panoramic shots and the tightly controlled fight scenes contrasting almost too perfectly as though Woo wanted to provide a how to do actions movies guide for student directors. One that Roland Emmerich would benefit from, granted, but isn't especially necessary otherwise.

Soon Hollywood would discover Bourne and this kind of film would never be quite the same again. Don't believe me, then watch Daniel Craig's last two outings as Bond and Cruise's last two appearances as Hunt. Better ways of spending your afternoon than watching this misfiring but stylish curate's egg of a movie.

The Darkest Hour

Urban survival, guerrilla style. This sort of movie traditionally focused on war stories and, in the form of Daniel Craig's non-Bond excursion Defiance, occasionally still does. But the trend now is for the enemy to be zombies, aliens or some kind of mutant distortion of humankind created when foolish scientists muck about with the human genome (which is in itself a development of Mary Shelley's nineteenth century ideas).

The Darkest Hour sees young American internet entrepreneurs Emile Hirsch and Max Minghella team up with Judge Anderson, I mean, Olivia Thirlby, and her Aussie pal plus an ever changing (regularly dying) gang of tourists and locals to survive alien invasion in Moscow. So far so Skyline, only in Moscow.

The aliens are invisible, like they're on a slightly different frequency of light or something. I dunno, it's not very well explained but has to do with microwaves. Fire other microwaves at them and they become visible and their armour cracks, meaning they might be vulnerable to earthly guns. Quite why the aliens are here isn't fully understood until close to the end of the film - asset-stripping? - but what is clear is that the young groovy folk and their pals are darned well going to fight back.

They learn that a Faraday cage set-up and mirrors or reflective glass can mask the presence of humans from the aliens, knowledge that along with a passing scientist's microwave gun allows them to scrape their way through several tense scenarios on their way to a nuclear submarine (an underwater Faraday cage) which becomes the promised land. Or a suitable destination to head for in order to successfully conclude such a movie.

And they get there. Except Max Minghella who doesn't. Emile and Olivia get there. They're the prettiest, of course they do. They find a young Russian lass along the way. She's quite pretty. She gets there too. That's how these things work, isn't it? The less pretty characters are for comic relief and cannon fodder.

Despite destroying Moscow the film still acts as quite a tourist lure. I'm certainly more interested in seeing the Parisian style boulevards and buildings. Not if there really has been an alien invasion, of course, but I'm thinking there hasn't. Our lizard overlords from deep under the ground wouldn't stand for it.