Technically well done, although a vein of nastiness makes it stumble

Rating: 6/10 (11 November 2015)

Kingsman: The Secret Service details the adventures of a young English man, improbably nicknamed Eggsy (Taron Egerton), whose brush with the law ends up with him recruited by secret agent extraordinaire Harry Hart (Colin Firth) to vie for an open slot in the British Secret Service. Meanwhile, villainous billionaire Samuel L. Jackson launches a scheme to decimate the world's population leaving only the greedy elite left standing.
Kingsman is a spoofy take on the old James Bond/British spy thrillers of yore with questionable attempts at being topical and edgy thrown into the mix. Most of the film contrasts Eggsy's adventures in his various tests, while Harry investigates Jackson. There is much that works well here thanks to director Matthew Vaughn knowing his way around an action scene. Unfortunately, the jarring shifts in tone and a streak of unwelcome nastiness running down its center prevent the film from reaching its full potential.
It is fascinating to see typical villain Mark Strong cast in a good guy role and the usually avuncular Michael Caine cast as a nasty snob. Jack Davenport is a handsome and charming actor, so it is a bit annoying to see him constantly wasted in thankless franchise roles. Sophie Cookson's rather generic heroine is nicely balanced by Sofia Boutella as Jackson's vicious henchwoman with lethal blades for legs. It is great to see Jackson eschew the tired tough guy persona as a blood-averse, lisping psychopath. In the central role, a star is born in Egerton, who demonstrates the charm, comic timing and appeal required, and has the hard-bodied physique to make the physical scenes half-credible. The film's biggest strength is Firth in a cheeky salute to prior spy legends – who has a fetish with tailored clothes and manners – always manners! Looking at the preview of Kingsman, it would appear to be a frothy, light-hearted romp through spy clichés. The end result is unexpectedly different and not necessarily in a good way. There are fun segments, but they are often side-lined by psychotically over-the-top brutal violence with people being skewered, slashed, hacked apart or having their heads explode. Similarly, the dialog is littered with near non-stop foul language. All of this serves little purpose given the slightness of the screenplay except a laughably misguided attempt to make the whole endeavor seem hard-edged. It has rather the opposite effect, often taking one out the action and giving them time to realize the preposterousness of what we see.
Attempts to make what we see topical or gritty often border on the offensive. The film adopts a rather cavalier view of the serious problem of global warming. A later scene set in a church obviously modeled on the notorious Phelps Church of Kansas devolves into an orgy of off-the-scale violence and brutality, barely made palatable given the odiousness of the victims. The final test for the Kingsman candidates hangs on their willingness to murder the puppies they were given at the start of training. The film also has the US president going along with Jackson's plot and we get a stand-in who is obviously supposed to be current President Obama – which culminates later with the First Family's heads literally exploding on screen – something which no doubt plays well in conservative circles. These attempts at edginess often seem more crass than clever.
Further missteps abound. As likable as Egerton is, the film only really kicks into high gear whenever Firth is on screen. An accident leaves his character sidelined for too much of the film and then he is almost immediately written out soon after – leaving a gaping hole. For being so smart, the Kingsman make an awful lot of dumb mistakes. When Harry realizes immediately that his cover has been compromised, he still partakes of a dinner with Jackson and ends up swallowing a tracker which leads the villain to Kingsman headquarters. Furthermore, does anyone believe that most of the world's leaders would agree to having a device in their heads that could cause them to explode? The concluding action at the villain's not-so-secret lair is increasingly silly. The heroes' initial plan on how to foil Jackson by taking down one of his satellites seems foolish since even the audience can foresee he will have a back-up and it takes our heroes forever to see a solution staring everyone else right in the face.
Despite some strong action sequences, amusing moments and a great cast, what is one to think when the scenes fresh in one's mind when exiting is that one character just leaned into the camera and barfed straight into the lens (one could say on the viewers) and that Eggsy's final act as an agent trained in good manners is to have anal sex with a kidnapped Swedish princess? Manners, indeed!