Bloody Hilarious and Hilariously Bloody

Rating: 7/10 (3 February 2015)

Kingsman: The Secret Service is literally the lovechild of classic James Bond and Matthew Vaughn's own Kick-Ass. It's about a super secret agency that sends spies around the world to take down eccentric and bizarre supervillains that live in mountain bases. They have lighter grenades, umbrella guns, and poison-tipped knives in their shoes, but above all they're also suave, upper class toffs. It's James Bond all over again. However, add in the swearing, blood and ultra-violence, truck-load of black humour, and copious amounts of pop culture references and self-mocking tone from Kick-Ass and you get Kingsman.
The kind of comedy you get here is very dark. If you don't find violence or gore funny, you won't be laughing much. Whether it's the amputee with swords for legs, or implants that cause heads to explode into colourful fireworks, there's plenty to go around. To be honest, I was actually taken quite aback by it all. I know it's Matthew Vaughn (and a 15), but I never expected it to be quite so bold and unapologetic. I mean the opening lines are "Oh s***, we f***ed up." And not long after, a guy is cleaved in half. It's unrelenting as the movie goes on as well.
There is a little bit of wit on display as well though. It's not all about the violence. There's a lot of tongue-in-cheek references that almost break the fourth wall, like the recurring line "It's not that kind of movie." And Eggsy's choice of dog name being representative of three of the biggest spies in pop culture (JB is the dog's name, and he's asked whether it's after James Bond, Jason Bourne, or Jack Bauer).
If there was particularly a weak point in the movie, it would probably be the CGI. In this day and age there's really no excuse for bad CGI. The opening titles are done in a really imaginative and integrated way, but the CGI used to do it looks really obvious. There's explosions from a brick building, and the bricks crumble, tumble and form into the words of the titles. Then the camera zooms into one of the windows. Unfortunately this scene is rife with CGI that looks like it was rendered in the 90s and just looks plain awful. There's no real effort to try and make the bricks blend in with the rest of the wall at all, and the way they tumble down and form into the words reeks of a cheap video game. It gets better later on, but for an opening, it doesn't leave a particularly good impression.
The other thing that didn't really rub right for me was the split personality of the film. Kick-Ass managed to hit a happy medium between being over-the-top and being grounded. It was horrifically good fun, but also tugged on the heartstrings and always felt completely natural. Kingsman on the other hand, you can tell they've aimed for the same kind of thing, but the mix just doesn't sit right. It's got the language and violence for adults, but the core of the movie feels like Spy Kids. It's over-the-top in the wrong kind of way, which is the point; it's to make fun of those classic spy films, but it just didn't mix particularly well in my opinion. It would be lighthearted, then super violent, then serious and dramatic, and there was no real transition to ease us into the new feel. It didn't ruin the movie by any means, don't get me wrong, it just prevented it from quite being the masterpiece Kick-Ass was.
Kingsman is certainly a very fun movie, full of lots of great actors, old and new alike. It's brave and unapologetic in it's mockery and depiction of violence, and that makes it an extremely entertaining watch, despite it's faults. It's bloody hilarious, and hilariously bloody. I give Kingsman an enjoyable 7/10, and would definitely recommend it to those that enjoy ultra- violence depicted in a lighthearted manner.