A veteran secret agent takes a young upstart under his wing.
Colin Firth’s well-turned-out secret agent is both homage and mickey-take of Bond in Matthew Vaughn’s second adaptation of deliriously irreverent Mark Millar material.
Injecting fun and fairground thrills back into the spy movie, Kingsman is a blast. Firth is sensational, Jackson rules and newcomer Egerton surprises. Mission accomplished for Matthew Vaughn.
There’s much to relish in Matthew Vaughn’s cartoonish spy flick.
For the most part, this is a riotously entertaining, superbly written thriller that will leave you shaken (with laughter) and stirred.
Perhaps the riskiest mainstream movie in years, Vaughn’s love letter to spy movies may be uneven in places, but it’s ultra-violent, envelope-pushing, and fun enough to overcome the flaws. Bond with the stabilisers taken off.
An ugly film dressed up in a cheap suit, the flaccid Kingsman is less biting, transgressive Bond tribute, and more akin to a gorier, swearier Stormbreaker. It ends on an anal sex joke, all while having babbled out of its own arse for the preceding two hours.
Vaughn’s direction isn’t subtle but you can’t help but warm to the boyish glee with which he tackles even the most preposterous the action sequences.
Offensive, vulgar, totally bonkers and occasionally brilliant.
It is a film forever demanding to be congratulated on how “stylish” it is.
It is a film that certainly leaves you shaken but not entirely stirred.
Verdict: Uproarious Bond spoof.
A gleefully violent and playfully subversive spin on a gone-respectable genre.
An irreverent, outlandish and violent comic book escapade which veers between inspired nonsense and irritating silliness.
For the most part it’s brash, boisterous fare, cocking unsubtle snooks at its generic predecessors, not least in a poster image that subverts the leggy chauvinism of For Your Eyes Only with a killer close-up of razor-sharp running blades. A shame, then, that the film should succumb to leering laddish humour, closing on an unforgivable bum note.
Mark Millar on Kingsman: 'I was seeing so many demonised housing estate characters'
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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