Thumbs Down

Rating: 3/10 (21 July 2015)

They had me going with the trailer. An urbane man in a suit beating down a room full of goons. I should have considered that this isn't the first time we've seen 'suit violence', but not in a comic vein, so the juxtaposition occurred to me as something fun and new. Too bad this was just marketing. The film doesn't deliver much on its premise. A super -secret society of gentlemen spies, led by Michael Caine, has lost one of its members, and each remaining Kingsman is supposed to propose a new candidate to train for their ranks. There is something like a coming-of-age story for the main character, 'Eggsy', a young hoodlum mentored by Harry Hart (Colin Firth), who was serving with Eggsy's father when he died. The film focuses on younger characters, so it feels like a movie for young people. The violence is comic-book, and while some people do get sliced in half, the film seems to earn its R rating with language and crudity. The Bond films have always used tongue-in-cheek characters in serious plots, but this film is too ridiculous to be taken seriously when it wants to be.