Studio: 20th Century Fox (2 hr. 9 min.)
Plot: A spy organization recruits an unrefined, but promising street kid into the agency’s ultra-competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius.
Cast: Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Sofia Boutella, Michael Caine, Mark Hamill
Rating: R
Bottom Line: ***
By Laurence Washington
If you’re longing for a campy James Bond film, sprinkled with a healthy dose of Quentin Tarantino, “Kingsman: The Secret Service” should be right up your alley. There’s a plethora of gadgets, gratuitous violence, destruction and of course sex.
Samuel L. Jackson, Nick Fury to you, plays Richmond Valentine an evil techno-genius poised for world domination by distributing free cell phones. There’s a little more to it than that, but that would be telling. Let’s just say it involves exploding heads.
Enter super spy Harry Hart (Colin Firth), a member of the independent Kingsman Secret Service, a spy agency headquartered beneath a Savile Row tailor shop – reminiscent of the “Man From U.N.C.L.E.”“Kingsman: The Secret Service” literary opens with a bang as a mission goes south with a young Marine killed on a Kingsman mission. Hart feels responsible, and watches over the Marine’s family for years because the young man once saved his life. Seventeen years later, Hart recruits the fallen soldier’s son, Gary “Eggsy” Unwin, a tough street kid living with his mother and an abusive stepfather.Eggsy outlast other Kingsman trainee hopefuls and teams up with Hart to stop Valentine and his femme fatale bodyguard Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) who sports Oscar Pistorius-type blades to slice and dice Valentine’s enemies.“Kingsman” is great popcorn movie that’s quite violent at times, as Valentine slaughters an unsuspecting church congregation he’s using as Guinea Pigs. Clever, witty and entertaining, but a word of caution, there’s gore galore.
Source: blackflix.com
This column was printed in the March 8, 2015 – March 21, 2015 edition.
