Cut to the present. Eggsy is now a teenager (Taron Egerton) and a juvenile delinquent. Harry helps free him when he gets arrested and recruits him to join Kingsmen, the secret agency where his late dad used to work. This is an organization of highly trained secret agents whose mission is to save the world. The training for new recruits is very competitive and only one will pass as Kingsman.
The evil villain is Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), a billionaire techie genius who aims to save our planet from deadly climate change. His plan is to drastically reduce the earth’s population by distributing free but deadly sim cards that will turn everyone into a brutal killer.
The movie is directed by Matthew Vaughn, who turned superhero movies on its head with “Kick-Ass” and did the fine sequel “X Men: First Class”. Kingsman is actually the name of a tailoring shop on London's famous Saville's Row. Here, it is used as a front for the agency that produces superspies.
That “Kingsman” is a tribute to James Bond and other spy movies is very obvious in Eggsy naming his pet dog JB. When their boss, Michael Caine (who also appeared in the Len Deighton ‘Harry Palmer’ spy movies), asked him if JB means James Bond or Jason Bourne, he says: “Jack Bauer”. Audiences in our local theatres didn’t laugh, meaning they didn’t get it and they’re not watching “24”.
There’s also a James Bond lookalike at the beginning of the movie who expertly tackles able-bodied villains to save a kidnapped scientist (Mark Hamill who’s Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars”), only to be cut into half by a woman who have sharp blades on her legs instead of feet. “Kingsman”, like James Bond flicks, has all the clever gadgets, a ludicrous conspiracy for its main plot and the villain’s ruthless sidekick who happens to be a woman amputee (Sofia Boutella) with razor-sharp prosthetic blades instead of feet.
There’s also a shocking twist where one of the lead characters suddenly gets killed without any foreboding. The movie likewise goes to town with its fast-paced action sequences. The body count is very high, like the carnage that takes place inside a church in Kentucky. Move over, Quentin Tarantino. No wonder it got an R-16 rating, even if you won’t really take the violence seriously, like a spectacular sequence where the heads of people blow up and form colorful mushroom clouds to the tune of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance March”.
Firth won the Oscar playing a British monarch who stutters. Here, he shows he’s got what it takes to do an action role as a sophisticated superspy, with the help of some nifty editing, of course, as shown in that sequence where he takes out a whole gang of goons armed only with a special umbrella. New actor Taron Egerton makes an impressive debut as Eggsy, showing his action skills in a “tuhog” parkour sequence and in the extended climactic showdown with the villains as the film ends.
Giving great support is Mark Strong as Merlin, Eggsy’s mentor. But guess who nearly steals the movie, it’s Samuel F. Jackson as the cartoonish megalomaniac villain who has a colorful wardrobe and speaks with a very noticeable lisp. A merciless loony who believes in the merits of genocide, he nevertheless is so comically averse to blood that he can’t bear to see actual killings as he’ll throw up. All in all, “Kingsman” is a fun action thriller with touches of comedy and lunatic violence that will grab your attention from start to finish.
