A fun and fast paced take on the spy genre, Kingsman: the Secret Service embraces the silliness of the genre while infusing it with top notch action and a brilliant mixture of old and new flavors.

After losing an agent on a mission to recover a kidnapped scientist (Mark Hamill), secret agent service the Kingsman are forced to find a replacement and get that replacement trained in time to stop whatever diabolical plan tech giant Valentine (Samuel L Jackson) is cooking up by offering up free wi-fi to the world. Each Kingsman agent must bring a prospect to the table and Harry Hart (Colin Firth) brings in the son of a fallen Kingsman agent who had saved his life. The son, Eggsy (Taron Egerton), is street smart drop out who had a ton of potential but squandered it in effort to help his mother and is looked down at as a dark horse at best and complete misfit at worst. Violence ensues.

Adapted from the comic the Secret Service by Mark Millar, Kingsman is a film that revels in excess and exudes style from every pore. Often when you see something so highly stylistic it suffers in substance but Kingsman manages to deliver on that as well if you accept a embracing and skewering of spy movie tropes with some decent character and world building thrown in as substance. I am sure it would be easy to go numb from the intense and near constant violence and ignore the movie’s other attributes but when taken as a love letter to spy movies it works enormously well.

The action scenes, and there are a lot of them, are very, very well done. The choreography is very impressive and the execution equally so. This is a movie that can comfortably sit next to the Raid 2 and John Wick without being intimidated and that is fine company to keep. That Colin Firth is front and center doing a large amount of it pushes the effectiveness even further. Taron Egerton is no slouch either and the fights here are enormously fun and satisfying, which is a good thing because there are a fair amount of them. It also helps that while there are plenty of cuts and camera movies, the fights are not shot in a shakey cam style nor are they put together with quick cuts. More often the camera pans around the action as it plays out and follows the fight’s momentum instead of particular players. This can be jarring in its own right but it goes a long way toward making the viewer feel as if they are right there watching from inside the fight as opposed to passively through some windows or something.

The writing is crisp and clever with a good deal of humor infused with a delightfully absurd and complicated plot centering around Valentine’s plans and motives. There are so many homages and tips of the hat to various spy franchises that is hard to keep track and a drinking game built around it would land its participants in the hospital with alcohol poisoning but they are welcome nods that are at their best when they are acknowledged and subverted.

The performances here are all super solid and the supporting cast delivers terrific turns. Mark Strong (Merlin) is sturdy as ever and is a mainstay of director Matthew Vaughn for a very good reason. Michael Caine does a great Michael Caine as Arthur and is as fun to watch as always. Samuel L Jackson is terrific as Valentine complete with a lisp giving him a disability just like all great Bond villains and Sofia Boutella is excellent as Valentine’s legless henchwoman Gazelle. Jack Davenport delivers a small turn as Lancelot and it makes me think he would make a damn fine replacement for Daniel Craig in the coming years.

 

The real stars here are Firth and Egerton and both are phenomenal. Firth brings every bit of the proper English Gentleman while also kicking a ridiculous amount of ass. That you believe him both ways really sells this character and this movie. He is absolutely spot on and is enormously fun to watch. Egerton likewise delivers the goods convincingly as both a street kid and eventually a more refined spy type. He never loses the essence of his character, however, and he goes a long way toward making the audience forget that we’ve seen this basic rags to riches plot hundreds of times. The chemistry between the two characters finishes smoothing out the rough edges of cliché and make it feel fresh even when it, necessarily, isn’t.

What really makes this whole thing work, ultimately, is that is all very fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are real moments of tension and suspense but even in the gravest of moments it never loses sight of what it is and where it is going. It is like a perfect blending of Roger Moore period Bond with more modern action and spy sensibilities and it is a near-perfect blend. I have been a fan of every one of the films that Matthew Vaughn has directed and Kingsman is no exception. His films always bring solid action with a healthy dose of humor and he knows just how to blend it. Kingsman is another notch on an already excellent belt.

Conclusion [9.0 out of 10]

Kingsman is not a movie for everyone really and if you have a low tolerance for violence, action, spy gadgets and general goofy nonsense then you probably won’t dig it much. But if you are a spy movie fan and you like solid action and comedy then you are in great hands here. I am solidly in the target audience for this movie as a Matthew Vaughn fan, a spy movie fan, an action fan, a comedy fan and, I know realize, a Colin Firth kicking huge amounts of ass fan. If you are also a fan of any or all of those things you should see this right away.