Movie Review: Kingsman: The Secret Service

By: Nathaniel Patton

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson
Rating: A-

The other day, I was lucky enough to be able to go see Kingsman: The Secret Service. I want to start off by saying that I went into this movie with pretty high hopes. I am a fan of Matthew Vaughn and I really his enjoy the usual style of his movies, action comedies. So I went in expected to enjoy myself and enjoy this movie, but it still somehow managed to exceed my expectation. It was a movie that had a lot of action, it made me laugh a lot, and the acting was good. Any movie that is able to do that is good enough for me.
The movie is about a boy, whose father was a member of a secret service known as the Kingsman, who got a chance to do something more with his life by also joining the Kingsman. However, the movie also had the eccentric villain who wanted to destroy the world. I realize this sounds like some kind of James Bond movie, but imagine a James Bond movie directed by Quentin Tarantino. The action in the movie was perfect. It had a lot, but it didn’t ever become too much that it got boring. As one can expect from Matthew Vaughn, the action was very well choreographed. The action sequences were fluent and violent, but also fun to watch. There is one action scene with Colin Firth’s character that had a wonderful, long fight that had me laughing for a long time.
That brings me to my next point, the cast and acting. The casting for this movie was perfect. For starters, there was Colin Firth playing a veteran Kingsmen agent that is mentoring the main character. At first, I was curious to see Colin Firth in an action role, but he did phenomenal. You also had Samuel L. Jackson playing the eccentric villain bent on destroying the world. One of the only things that bothered me in this movie was the fact that he spoke with a lisp the entire movie. You had Michael Caine playing the leader of the Kingsman, Mark Strong playing Merlin (the Kingman’s version of Bond’s Q), and Mark Hamill even had a small part in the film. However, these actors cannot completely overshadow Taron Egerton’s performance. He was really impressive in this movie. He had the perfect mix of being serious and being funny.
All of that was great, but the reason I enjoyed this movie so much was because of how fun it was. I was able to just sit back in my seat and enjoy a movie that had me smiling the whole time. It made me laugh a lot, but occasionally got serious to keep me on my toes. It was just a fun trip to the theater. I would recommend this film to anyone who asks because I would definitely pay to see this movie again.