Fairly poor action film aimed at the "young adult" market

Rating: 2/10 (6 September 2015)

This film was picked by my 15 year old son as a family film, suitable for middle-teens up - obviously.
To any parents contemplating renting this film for kids nearly 15 "because they're quite mature" I'd suggest caution. This should really be an 18.
How the BBFC could have awarded this offering a 15 certificate beggars belief - without offering any spoilers, the language in the film is rather excessively bad with most sentences containing the F- word, and a couple of variants to do with incest. There is also a highly inappropriate gag relating to anal sex that has a visual punchline at the end of the movie.
Disregarding the prolific foul language and surprisingly graphic violence, it's actually a very formulaic teen/young persons' actioner akin to "Storm Breaker". Tough inner city underdog wins through to overcome a bunch of snooty Oxbridge toffs and become a Kingsman - some sort of Super Army Soldier/MI6/Ninja agent.
Colin Firth appears to be tired of his career as a softly spoken, typically-English romantic lead and is trying to more street by incorporating a few four letter words into his vocabulary, kicking wholesale ass, and decapitating women with a fire axe. He really should stick to what he's good at. Samuel L Jackson is also at his cringe-making worst (I actually rather like SLJ in pre-Star Wars era) as the camp, lisping super villain of the piece. Even by the standards of "Snakes on a Plane" this is not one of his finest hours.
The rest of the cast do their best with what they're given - Mark Strong and Michael Caine will no doubt have been grateful for their cheques for turning up and going through the motions.
Bottom line in my opinion is that it's a slightly below par, adolescent thriller/actioner starring a group of talented actors who for whatever reason (Aging, or early career) need the work - but really should have known better. It's spoiled as a family movie by excessive bad language and somewhat too graphic violence - admittedly without much blood-spatter.