Kingsman review- a critique by Chris Stuckmann

Full text transcript of the Kingsman review:

Kingsman The Secret Service is directed by Matthew Vaughn and stars Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Terrence Edgerton. I believe, as I say, his name and it’s a total love letter to old school British spy films. What this film is about is a group called The Kingsmen. These guys are the ultimate badasses of the universe, but they’re also very gentlemanly people who are extremely good at killing people with just about anything available to them. And when Colin Firth’s character gets the opportunity to recruit this very young kid who is actually the son of a former Kingsmen, he grabs a hold of that opportunity, trains him and teaches them how to not only be an ultimate badass, but a gentleman. Matthew Vaughn’s band director I’ve admired for quite some time. I think the guy’s really talented. And if you haven’t seen layer cake, it’s one of his earlier films and very overlooked. And some people actually consider it might be the film that got Daniel Craig the Bond role. And Matthew Vaughn’s love of spy films is very apparent with this movie, and he is very good at crafting action scenes.

This is something that I’ve talked about recently, action scenes, action heroes, the way they’re choreographed, the way they’re filmed. Kingsman does a fantastic job at presenting a very stylish and modern look at the way action is. But you can also tell what’s going on. The stunts are great and it also attributes the very old school style of like villains with crazy dismemberments or weird parts about their body. A lot of Bond villains are like that. And in this film, a very, very awesome girl has blades for feet and she is great in this movie. Very intimidating. Also, the character of Roxy, who is a girl who is also training to try to be the next Kingsman. She was awesome as well. And Samuel L. Jackson as the villain, knocked it out of the park. At first I was like, I don’t know about this lisp.

It was a little Waterboy esque, was like, I like my H2O2, I’m going to open up a can of soup on you.

But in the long run, it actually worked and it added a lot to the movie and it made him a more interesting character. Colin Firth also was fantastic in the action scenes, and this was something I was very curious about. Colin Firth, action hero. I don’t know about that, but he did a great job. And I read on the IMDB trivia that he apparently did most of his own stunts, around 80 percent of them, which is great. And something I also have been complaining about in action films recently. Now, I really want to talk about who is essentially the main character of the movie, Taryn Edgerton. If I said his name incorrectly, I apologize. He was fantastic in this movie. His stunt work was awesome. He gave a lot of humanity to his performance. And that is also something I really want to touch on. Every character in this movie, the major ones, anyway, has something about him or her that makes them a human being, has a great past, a really great setup, so you can actually care about them when the action starts. This is another problem I’ve been having with action movies lately. And this movie that when the movie opened with Dire Straits Money for nothing, I was like, OK, this soundtrack is going to be great. Dire Straits is one of my favorite bands from the eighties. Mark Knopfler was a lead singer and he’s one of my favorite guitarists, if not my favorite guitarist. And not a lot of people ever really talk about him or have his music and movies. So it is really cool to see that. Just a side note on Dire Straits. Check out the guitar solo, Sultans of Swing Alchemy Live. Best guitar solo these ears have ever heard, another film that very recently tried to tribute classic spy films was Mortdecai and it did it entirely wrong. This film shows you how to do it entirely right. The action is extremely fun. It’s well filmed. It’s well performed. The characters have something about them that makes them human. They’re interesting.

They’re funny. And there are moments in the film that are a little boundary pushing. I mean, there’s a part where my jaw dropped and I said, Colin Firth is killing people in a church. This is nuts. And it worked, though, and I wouldn’t really describe this movie as predictable either. And that’s something I really liked about it as well. It was kind of hard to see where certain things were going. My small issues with the film is that there are some character arcs that seem like they’re not really completed when the film ends. Now, I didn’t get up right when the credits start because about a minute into the credits, there is an after credit scene that finishes off a confrontation. And I was very happy about that. But there are other character confrontations that I was expecting to come up a little bit more at some point. And there are times when the film is a little bit uneven in its pacing.

Besides that, I had an immense time with Kingsman Secret Service. I would highly recommend seeing it and I’m going to give it an A minus. Oh, finally, I’ve been experiencing a drought lately, so good to see a good movie in theaters. Guys, what are your thoughts on Kingsman if you have seen it? And if you haven’t, please do, because there were like four people in my theater. Please go see this movie. It’s good. Give it a little bit of dough, guys. Sincerely, thank you very much, as always, for watching. And if you like this, you can click right here and get stuck magnetised.