Warm-hearted action comedy

Rating: 6/10 (12 September 2017)

KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE is very much a kindred spirit to KICK-ASS, doing for the spy genre what KICK-ASS did for comic books. It's a light and breezy affair, a film which never takes itself too seriously, involving British spies battling a megalomaniac bent on world domination. Taron Egerton suffers from being an unlikeably 'street' character for a lot of the running time, and some of the humour is a little crude for my tastes, but otherwise this is a film which hits the ground running with a heady mix of comedy, action, and genre tropes.
The story is ludicrous and a deliberate throwback to '60s cinema. Samuel L. Jackson hams it up a storm as the baddie while it's fun to see Colin Firth playing something other than the slightly stuff romantic figure he always reverts to. Where KINGSMAN excels is in the violent action scenes, which play up brief snippets of outrageousness and feature far better choreography than expected. The church fight is the undoubted highlight, but the large-scale action of the climax is well staged too. CGI is used extensively, but works for the most part. I may not be running out to see the sequel anytime soon, but I'll definitely give it a watch at some point.