Great fight scenes, confused directional style and unrealistic plot

Rating: 5/10 (27 June 2015)

Kingsman the Secret Service, directed by Matthew Vaughn, is a 2014 action thriller that pays homage to the classic British spy genre. It stars Taron Egerton in the lead role, with Colin Firth, Mark Strong and Sophie Cookson in supporting roles and Samuel L. Jackson as the villain. Many reviewers really liked this movie, but although there were a few good things about it, I did not like it so much. Let me explain why.
The plot was clichéd and predictable. The main character Eggsy (played by Egerton) was a classic troubled teenager that is recruited by Harry Hart (played by Firth) an old friend of Eggsy's late father, to be part of the Kingsman Secret Service and capture bad guys that want to destroy the world. Eggsy goes on to learn the ways of the Kingsmen and eventually saves the world from an obnoxious megalomaniac (played by Jackson) that wants to destroy the world with his super weapon or something like that. That is basically the whole plot. Along the way, some people betray each other and some people get killed and there is a lot of explaining the plot that goes around in circles and there are some very cool fight scenes. I really felt that the plot lacked substance. There was really nothing special about a teenager perfecting his skill and saving the world from a bad guy. Even with a simplistic plot like this, interesting things can be done with it. The problem with this movie was that the stylistic choices including bright color schemes and out-of-place upbeat music and the dialogue, made it hard for me to take the movie seriously and really get involved in the fact that Sam Jackson's character wanted to kill everyone. The gore and tension throughout the movie was downplayed by the style. People were getting killed and there was upbeat disco music playing in the background. It felt as if they were going for a light-hearted family movie, and then there was intense murder scenes with lots and lots of gore that were still treated in the style of a light-hearted family film. It just didn't make sense. The characters didn't seem to take it seriously that people were dying a lot. I really didn't understand what Matthew Vaughn was going for in stylistic choices.
One of the main problems I had with this film was Samuel Jackson's ridiculous performance as the villain Valentine, especially his annoying lisp. Jackson is a great actor and I admire many of his performances, but his character simply wasn't remotely believable. We were supposed to believe as audience members that Valentine was some kind of evil genius that created some kind of technology or something like that (I lost track of the convoluted explanations) that caused people to fight each other, when he acted like he was really dumb. He was visible clueless when Colin Firth's intellectual gentleman character explained his position on environmental problems, something that Valentine was supposedly an expert on. Throughout the movie, Valentine consistently wears a casual baseball cap and swears casually in professional discussions. He gives the impression that he is an uneducated thug and not even a good one at that, but in fact according to the movie, he is a technological genius and public figure that creates a super weapon. In addition, he relies on his bodyguard Gazelle (played by Sofia Boutella) to do all the fighting. Valentine captures many WORLD LEADERS and important people without even having an army. He has a few henchman that show up at the end and are easily disposed by Eggsy and his comrades. It just isn't believable. At all. His character also seems somewhat racist given that Jackson is the only black actor in the film. Of course the one black guy has to be the evil terrorist WTF? In addition, Jackson and Sofia Boutella are the only non- English people in the film and they are the bad guys. It seems as if the filmmakers are trying to say that English people are smart and everyone else isn't.
There are many other problems I have with this movie including the long boring pacing with many unnecessary dialogue scenes (or information dumps), the convoluted plot structure, clichéd character development and consistent lack of substance. The one thing that I did like about this movie were the elaborate and well-choreographed and well-filmed fight sequences. There were quite a few fight scenes throughout the film and they were filmed often as long shots that were sped up and slowed down with pans and not much shaky cam. It reminded me of the stylistic fight sequences in Green Street Hooligans (which was a very good movie by the way). Aside from how well the fights were put together a lot of them seemed unnecessary and featured gratuitous gore and violence that didn't belong. In particular, there was one scene where Firth's character starts killing people in a church that lasts for probably about 3 minutes. At the end it is casually explained by Jackson that he used his weapon to brainwash Firth into killing everyone, and Firth barely reacts to that before getting shot in the head. This is somewhat of a surprise in the movie, but honestly Firth's character isn't likable enough for me to care one way or the other.
Besides the cool fight sequences, good cinematography and okay acting, this movie is a tediously long action thriller that lacks substance, original characters and plot elements, is predictable and has many plot elements that simply aren't believable or realistic. It has a family fun style but is way to gory to watch with young kids. Watch this movie if you are drinking beers with friends and don't mind cheesy movies or Samuel Jackson's obnoxious lisp. I give this movie a C- or a 6/10.