A Truly Strange Black Comedy Action Movie?

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2019)

21 February 2015. It's uncertain whether or not Kingsman reflects the best of the evolving black comedy trend in movies or not and whether such a trend is a passing or permanent element of a classic movie. Whichever it is, Kingsman currently is a superior film with its finely honed balance of black, dark murderous content being portrayed alongside British, gentlemanly wit. This film is a Colin Firth's best actor Oscar high English version of the The King's Speech (2010) meets the comedic spy romp of James Coburn's Our Man Flint (1966) meets the hard edged, raw espionage of the refurbished, rebranded James Bond in the form of Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006). Dark comedy in the spy genre has been gaining more prominent film focus as they have evolved from the more entertaining comedy action motif of the popular and zany Wild, Wild West (1999) or the romantic interplay of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) taking on the more darker and serious ambiance of the action crime thriller, The Dark Knight (2008) as Sam Rockwell in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) and Pierce Brosnan in The Matador (2005) seemed to make be some of the first forays into this gumbo of movie genres that began with the classic Pulp Fiction (1994), Kingsman appears to take its basic thematic tone from the blackest of action comedy of Uma Thurman's Kill Bill 1 & 2 (2003, 2004) and incorporating a culturally off-balance brush stroke of the military black comedy war movie Tropic Thunder (2008). Recently a number of movies have taken murderous death and blended these atrocious acts with a finely balanced hue of comedic overtones such as Bill Nighy's Wild Target (2009), Violet & Daisy (2011), Brad Pitt in Killing Them Softly (2012), Kevin Costner in 3 Days to Kill (2014) and Katie Holme's very proper but fatalistic Miss Meadows (2014). Kingsman includes the added bonus of a strong performance as a villain in the form of a fascinatingly speech impeded Samuel L. Jackson. This dark comedic action thriller comes across as something, fresh, new, and bold while sustaining an especially emotional intensity throughout and grabbing the audience refusing to let them go until the end. Whether or not this whole creatively new comedic frenzied experience is a passing endorphin high or some established benchmark of greatest remains to be seen.