Kingsman: The Secret Service features a lot of things that you wouldn't expect a major studio film to go anywhere near. A brutal fight-scene/shootout in a middle America church, multiple heads exploding, and a gag that closes out the film that is both juvenile and too good to spoil. All of this is played for laughs, and it all works. Truth be told, Kingsman is easily the most fun action movie since Guardians of the Galaxy, in fact, it's probably actually more fun. Kingsman marks the second time director Matthew Vaughn has adapted work by comic book writer Mark Millar, with their first collaboration being Kick-Ass. This time however Vaughn completely cuts loose with the material with an adaption that feels more like a love letter to classic spy films with it's own subversive edge. If the James Bond franchise is the Beatles then Kingsman is the Sex Pistols.
The actual plot of Kingsman is pretty run-of-the-mill spy thriller mixed with young adult drama fare. Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton), the son of a deceased Kinsgman agent, is recruited by current member Harry Hart (Colin Firth) into a cutthroat training program to decide who will be the next agent to join the top secret organization. At the same time, billionaire Richmond Valentine (a lisping Samuel L. Jackson) plans to solve over population and climate change by transmitting a signal through his company's mobile devices that causes the owners to become bloodthirsty and violent, thus eliminating a majority of the human race. Valentine's plan is ridiculous, convoluted, over the top, and perfectly in synch with the rest of the film's send up of spy film cliches. While it's easy to picture Kingsman as a smug retort to the genre it borrows heavily from, there is also a clear admiration and wide eyed glee for the soy films of yesteryear under it's anarchic surface.
Firth is fantastic as Hart in a role that could do very easily do for him what the first Taken film did for Liam Neeson. The only real low point of his performance is the fact that it took this long for him to star in an action movie. Egerton is also great as the main character Eggsy in his first major acting role, which likely won't be his last. I won't be long before he's cast in a superhero or, preferably, a sequel to Kingsman.