Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

Written by Per Gunnar Jonsson on April 28, 2018

If you like old-fashioned James Bond style movies you probably like this one. It is a bit more outrageous and has a few more overly silly moments than the old Bond movies but on the whole this is a very fun and enjoyable secret agent movie.

Gary is, via a few twists and turns at the beginning of the movie, recruited by a secret agent employed by a super secret private organisation with remarkable resources. Their agents looks and behaves like London upper class gentlemen but have remarkable fighting skills. The initial scenes when Gary is recruited are just great.

Gary is then submitted to a rather gruesome training schedule and at the same time the main plot plays out in parallell. Of course the two threads merge towards the classical showdown with the megalomaniacal evil mastermind in the end where, naturally, Gary gets to save the world.

The movie has all the “goodies” of a secret agent movie. British gentlemen agents, action, secret agent “stuff” like shops that are not what they look like, hidden entrances into secret bases, rooms that are actually elevators and of course gadgets, lots of gadget to help our heroes thwart the evil mastermind’s nefarious plans. Of course said mastermind have a personal henchman a la Oddjob to do the more grisly parts of his evil biddings. I quite liked this rather unique henchman, or rather henchwoman, and her odd weapons. More so than the main villain which I found a bit bland at times.

On the whole I enjoyed this movie a lot. However, there are some silly parts which drags it down a bit. I especially disliked the colorful exploding heads towards the end of the movie. That just felt like the producer/director was smoking some funny stuff when making those scenes. There were a few other scenes which I felt was going too much towards silly comedies as well. Without those I would probably have added a star.

All things said this was well spent 130 minutes as far as I am concerned.