Kingsman: The Secret Service - Review

Kingsman: The Secret Service 

“KIngsman: The Secret Service” starring Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Michael Caine and Samuel L. Jackson tells the story of a British super-secret highly sophisticated spy organization that recruits promising ultra-competitive twenty something’s into a training program so as to be available to deal with the constant global threats that emerge from time to time.

In the backdrop of this story, we see Colin Firth recruiting an unpolished, uneducated, but promising street kid named “Eggsy” who Firth’s character “Harry” has had an indirect relationship with “Eggsy” when he was a small child. We see Harry and the Kingsman organization taking him and the other recruits through a rigorous array of seemingly life and death scenarios to determine what one recruit out of the initial six would survive to being selected as a member of the prestigious spy organization.

We also see as a backdrop to the recruitment side of the film’s story the subplot of a diabolical entrepreneurial genius played by Samuel Jackson named “Richmond Valentine” who talks with a noticeable lisp who has come up with a combination of a technological and biological solution of dealing with man’s destructive impact on the environment through self-culling.

PROS OF THE FILM: “Kingsman” reminds me a bit, in that homage kind of way, of the old Sean Connery and Roger Moore James Bond films where their 007 was more of a flamboyant stylish and witty figure than actual serious spy where the dire situations they were placed in were far less of a perilous threat to Bond’s survival or his mission. And also just like these old Bond movies, Kingsman offers up an array of tongue in cheek, “wink-wink” dashing and sometimes amusing dramatic situations, including diabolical characters who were far less sinister and instead come across more comically over the top in their deviousness that ultimately made them equally appealing to the film’s overall story line.

CONS OF THE FILM: The film is fun to watch and moves along well, but the subplot of the training scenarios were far more interesting than the main plot involving Sam Jackson’s character convoluted and preposterous idea to save the planet; as he sees it.

CONCLUSION: “Kingsman” runs two hours with a genuine ease to watch, that while at times was confusing, was still nonetheless very entertaining with its timely appropriate amounts of polished action, witty dialog and stylish charisma.

3 – 1/2 Stars