Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) Directed by Matthew Vaughn. Starring: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, & Samuel L. Jackson. IMDB says: “A spy organization recruits an unrefined, but promising street kid into the agency’s ultra-competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius.”
Kingsman: The Secret Service puts a fresh, rated-R edge on the common spy movie. There are gadgets and secret societies of the finest agents, but in this spy movie the hero is a delinquent who’s constantly dropping F-bombs at a rate that would make any proper gentleman blush. Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is taken under the wing of a Kingsman agent, Harry Hart (a more badass Colin Firth than seen before), as a new recruit for the Kingsman, a secret service agency. Eggsy is the kind of kid who’s capable of performing well but has never really given a shit about anything before. It’s maybe not the most original character type, but Egerton plays him with such confidence and humor that Eggsy is a likeable hoodlum. He’s dropping into a rigorous training program where potential recruits face challenges that knock them out until the best of them become an agent. This part of the movie is the B-story though, playing out parallel to our villain’s evil plan taking shape.
Part of the reason this movie works well is because there’s a memorable villain, which is vital for action movies to really stand out. This is often a weak point of the genre (plenty of Marvel movies are guilty of this). Of course, most of the success is thanks to Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Richmond Valentine, the wealthy owner of a technology conglomerate who is funny and just eccentric enough to fit into this heightened reality while still totally being a megalomaniac that could (probably does) exist. His plan is legitimately crazy and also kind of would help save the planet/destroy it at the same time? His sidekick, Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) is a legit assassin with motherfucking prosthetic legs that double as weapons. I’ve never seen such a thing. Everything in this movie is just slightly bonkers like that (the soundtrack also happens to feature the earworm Dizzee Rascal song “Bonkers”).
Kingsman has a ton of energy, at its height during frantic, kinetic choreographed fighting sequences (most of which involve Firth just straight up kicking everyone’s ass… he obviously had so much fun making this). Matthew Vaughn filmed some of the best fight action sequences (not seen in The Raid films) in recent years in Kick-Ass and he tries to take it further here with a higher body count. Unfortunately there’s no scene in Kingsman that rivals the best of Kick-Ass. That would be my main critique of the film – all the pieces of this movie don’t quite rise to a higher level like in Vaughn’s previous movies. There’s some too-corny gags that distract from the general good wit throughout; some too-stylized direction that focuses on the camera movement more than the actual fighting in the midst of genuinely exciting action set pieces; competing tones at times between serious and goofy scenes. There’s so much I enjoyed in Kingsman and overall it’s a very fun movie, but there’s room for improvement.
At least this movie takes risks though, which makes everything a bit more exciting. It also takes shots at all sorts of political ideologies, global warming, prejudice, and criticizing the 1%ers with some zany humor. It’s sort of all over the place in that respect and I don’t think ever makes a concrete statement about one thing, but it’s a little more interesting than your standard villain motivations. I definitely saw some craziness here that I’ve never seen before.
Colin Firth says in the film “manners maketh man” in a little lesson to Eggsy, but Kingsman shamelessly delights in having no manners, much more concerned with being a fun time at the theaters. I recommend you take part.
FTS SCORE: 78%