Remember the old James Bond movies? Not the gritty, intricate Daniel Craig ones that are all fantastic, but the colorful unrealistic ones with Pierce Brosnan, Roger Moore, and Sean Connery. Those were the films where villains threw razor blade hates and had metal teeth. Those movies in comparison were completely outlandish (Like contrasting Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight to Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever). But, they sure were a lot of fun. Kingsman: The Secret Service harkens back to the old days when action movies didn’t have to be straight laced to be entertaining.
Director Matthew Vaughn (Kick Ass, X-Men: First Class) knows what he has here, and treats it like those quirky action movies of old. Like Men in Black with no aliens, Kingsman tells the story of a secret organization of spies. Colin Firth (in his first ever role as a badass) takes on the role of the wily veteran agent who recruits the troubled son of a former member (Taron Egerton). Together with other members of the agency (Jon Strong, Michael Caine, Sophie Cookson), they must stop a megalomaniac’s (Samuel L. Jackson) global plot to create mass level extinction. Sound enough like a throwback Bond movie?
While a proper homage to the classic spy genre, at times Kingsman follows every cliché imaginable. But what it lacks in plot and story, it makes up for in its characters. Taron Egerton is suave and stylish as the young lead, Eggsy, even if the rest of the young cast is forgettable. The real showstoppers are the villains. Samuel L. Jackson is hilarious as the eccentric, billionaire psychopath with a heavy lisp and a poor stomach for violence. He carries the charisma that all good spy movie villains must have. His henchwoman Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), an amputee with blade legs, helps create some jawdropping action sequences. And there are plenty of those to go around, especially in the exhilarating final act.
If ludicrous plots, excessive violence, and use of the F-word in every other sentence are not your forte, then you should run as far away from Kingsman as possible. But if you’re looking for some swift action and a bit of self-referential humor (and if you don’t want to sit through Fifty Shades of Grey) then Kingsman is a great time. It is violent, gratuitous, excessively loud, and it’s the most fun film to hit theaters in 2015.
FINAL GRADE: B+
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