Kingsman: The Secret Service

Rating: 5/10 (6 March 2017)

'Kingsman: The Secret Service' is a comedy film that satirises spy movies such as the James Bond franchise. Gary 'Eggsy' Unwin (played by Taron Egerton) is a normal working class 18 year old from London who gets recruited into a super secret spy organisation. Humour comes as he tries to mix with these posh and suave upper-class stereotypes.
Matthew Vaughn has included his typical ultra stylised violence ('Kick Ass') and it does boast a good sound track. There are a lot of nods to films such as Quentin Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction' but it just reminds me of examples when things have been done much better. The highlight of the film for me was a scene in which Colin Firth violently massacres a crazy church to the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd ('Free Bird') whilst almost seeming like a continuous long shot.
The screenplay is very unoriginal and the dialogue with the young actors in particular is cringe-worthy. Tarantino type set-pieces just come across as annoying as the film fails to have any cleverness or creativity.
Apart from Colin Firth every actor is either average or just really bad. Samuel L. Jackson, in particular, is worse than usual as he tries to add some freshness to his regular spiel by trying to affect an annoying and distracting speech impediment.
'Kingsman' is going to appeal to the intended target age group as it does contain scenes of fantasy violence depicted as "cool" whilst characters swear. It would also help your enjoyment of the film if you have not seen the many, many examples where each scene had been conducted much better. My final rating for this film is 2.5 stars.