A mess of mishandled, if interesting ideas

Rating: 3/10 (6 July 2015)

Kingsman: Secret Service is a heartfelt parody of Spy Movies, but chiefly ends up a collection of ideas that do not mesh or work well. The cast delivers mixed performances. Colin Firth carries the movie well, and Taron Egerton is refreshing and charismatic in the lead role. However, Samuel L. Jackson is terribly miscast, awkward and misused.
From a technical point of view, the movie suffers from overuse of erratic, frantic editing that gets old and meshes poorly with the script's tone. The movie is chock full of visual effects with standards that range from standard to shoe string budget, although the film had a decent budget of $80 million. The dialogue is often clunky, the movie has pacing problems, and the comedy is low brow yet lacks the energy of (for instance) an Austin Powers movie.
On the positive side, the fight choreography and stunt work is top notch, there is some decent set design and style to the movie, and the story is mostly serviceable.
All told, Kingsman is a movie with heart that unfortunately falls apart due to inept handling of many aspects.