- UK release: January 2015
- Director: Matthew Vaughn · Writers: Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn
- Studio / distributor: 20th Century Fox; Marv Films
- Genre: Spy action comedy / comic-book adventure · Runtime: 129 minutes (BBFC 15)
- Main cast: Taron Egerton as Eggsy; Colin Firth (The King’s Speech, A Single Man) as Harry Hart; Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, Jurassic Park) as Valentine; Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Sherlock Holmes) as Merlin
- IMDb: 7.7 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 74% critics / 84% audience · My rating: 8.5 / 10
Matthew Vaughn has spent the last few years making genre films that look like the real thing but refuse to behave. He gave us a Layer Cake that quietly auditioned Daniel Craig for Bond, an X-Men prequel that took the franchise seriously again, and Kick-Ass, which asked what would actually happen if a teenager in a wetsuit tried to fight crime. Kingsman is the logical next step: take the British spy film, the Roger Moore end of it especially, and ask what it would be if someone made it now with no embarrassment about how silly it has always been. The surprise is not that he tries it. The surprise is how well it holds together.
The setup
Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is a sharp, aimless south London lad with a record, a vile stepfather and a wasted talent for getting into and out of trouble. He calls in an old favour and is pulled into Kingsman, a private intelligence outfit that runs out of a Savile Row tailor’s and answers to nobody. His sponsor is Harry Hart (Colin Firth), an immaculate agent who owes Eggsy’s late father a debt. While Eggsy is put through a brutal recruitment programme, a lisping tech billionaire named Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) is giving away free SIM cards to the entire planet, which is the sort of generosity that tends not to be free. The film keeps its real plan close to its chest, and I will leave it there.
The cast
The casting is the cleverest thing here. Colin Firth, last seen winning prizes for stammering through The King’s Speech, turns out to be wonderful as a killing machine in a three-piece suit, all clipped courtesy and sudden violence. He plays it perfectly straight, which is why it works. Egerton, an unknown, carries the lead without strain and earns the arc from estate kid to gentleman spy. Samuel L. Jackson has fun inverting his usual menace into a queasy, blood-squeamish villain who cannot stand the sight of what he sets in motion. Mark Strong, so often the heavy, gets to be the warm one for once, a Scottish quartermaster with real affection under the briefings. Michael Caine anchors the old guard, which feels like a wink given the company.
The craft
Vaughn directs action like a man who has watched every Bond and decided the fights should actually hurt and actually delight. A mid-film set piece in a church, scored to wild guitar and shot to look like one unbroken take, is among the most outrageous things in any recent action film, gleeful and appalling in equal measure. The whole thing is dressed beautifully, the gadgets are daft in the best tradition, and Henry Jackman’s score drives it hard. Vaughn knows exactly when the comic-book register tips into excess and mostly rides that line on purpose. When it goes too far, and it does, it is by design rather than accident.
How it stacks up
The obvious comparison is Bond, which the film quotes, mocks and clearly loves. But the closer cousin is Vaughn’s own Kick-Ass: the same delight in puncturing a genre while delivering it properly, the same willingness to put a young protagonist through real nastiness. There is Men in Black in the secret-organisation machinery and the recruitment structure, and a strong dose of the class comedy that British spy fiction has always traded on, the My Fair Lady of it, the rough lad taught which fork to use before he is handed a licence to kill. Few films juggle this many tones without dropping one.
Critics versus the rest of us
The critical line is split, and predictably so. Critics sit around 74%, audiences notably warmer at 84%, and the gap tells the story. The energy, the choreography and Firth’s reinvention win nearly everyone over. The sticking point is the violence and a streak of laddish humour that some find a touch too pleased with itself, a closing gag in particular. I take the point and I am unbothered by it: this is a film that signals its tone in the first ten minutes and never pretends to be respectable. Judged as the loud, knowing comic-book spy romp it sets out to be, it lands almost everything it swings at.
Verdict
This is squarely my kind of thing. It is an espionage film with wit, a genre piece that knows its own history and plays with it, and crucially it is enormously rewatchable, the sort of film you put on knowing the church scene is coming and still grin. The plot strains in the third act and the humour occasionally trips over its own cheek, but the craft, the cast and the sheer confidence carry it past those wobbles with room to spare. It is funnier and better made than a film this rude has any right to be. 8.5⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now. Worth seeing with a crowd, where the church sequence plays best.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: Kingsman did well enough to launch a series. Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) took the action bigger and more scattered, splitting opinion more sharply than the original, and a period prequel, The King’s Man (2021), filled in the organisation’s origins to a cooler reception. The first film has held up as the best of the run, the one where the tone, the budget and Vaughn’s mischief were all in balance. It is now widely available on disc and digital and streams on Disney+ in the UK depending on region.
BBFC content advice
Rated 15 by the BBFC for strong bloody violence, strong language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: There are a number of highly stylised fight scenes, involving the use of weapons such as guns, knives, axes, explosive devices and prosthetic legs fashioned as razor-sharp blades. The action in these scenes is fast-paced and rapidly-edited, although the violence is strong and bloody there is no lingering focus on pain and injury.
Threat and horror: In one sequence, a large group of people in a church kill each other when a form of mind control is activated. In spite of the fantasy nature of the scene, the impression this creates of a massacre taking place in a ‘real world’ setting may remind some viewers of terrorist attacks and be disturbing for younger people.
Language: There is frequent use of strong language (‘fk’ and ‘motherfker’), and infrequent use of very strong language (‘c**t’), as well as use of milder terms.
Sex: There are some crude sexual references, including a running joke about the central male character being offered anal sex with a woman as a reward for saving the world, which some viewers may find distateful.
Discrimination: There is some use of discriminatory terms, including the ‘n’ word and ‘fag’.
Injury detail: Bloody injury detail is seen in the aftermath of violent incidents.
Nudity: Brief female buttock nudity occurs in a crude sexual context.
Alcohol and smoking: Adult characters drink alcohol.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
