'Kingsman' is Royally Fun

This weekend millions of movie goers rushed to their local theater to see a popular book adapted into a movie.  And the rest of the people went and saw 50 Shades of Grey.  Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class director, Matthew Vaughn, has brought another Mark Millar adaptation to the big screen for all of us to enjoy.  In preparation for seeing Kingsman: The Secret Service I made sure to read the original source material, and now part of me wishes I hadn't. 

 Eggsy is a juvenile delinquent whose father was killed when he was just a boy.  When he runs into some trouble with the law he calls an emergency number and Galahad shows up to bail him out.  Played by Colin Firth, Galahad is part of an organization known as Kingsman.  They are a privately funded secret service that saves the world on a daily basis, and Eggsy is offered a chance to be one of them.  Eggsy undergoes harsh training, but he biggest obstacle is helping to stop a billionaire known as Valentine; played by Samuel L. Jackson. Valentine has a plan to cleanse the Earth in order to save it, but doing so means killing billions of people.

Having read the comic book the film was based off of, the differences immediately stood out to me.  In the book, Valentine was a young, white, nerd instead of an older, black, nerd.  Eggsy's dad had nothing to do with Kingsman and Eggsy was actually Galahad's nephew.  Also,  Galahad's journey in the film ends differently.  With all that said, this is fun movie to watch.  It's about a British secret service so the entire film is poking fun at itself in a way, self aware of the James Bond and other spy comparisons.  I think if the film didn't mention these references the entire film would not have worked.

Colin Firth was the perfect choice as Galahad.  As an Oscar winning actor he has a great amount of respect in the film community so he was the right choice for this character, who had to come off as a better version of 007.  It was also refreshing to see Samuel L. Jackson play a character who is not "a bad ass mother f*cker" much like his other stereotypical roles.  Michael Caine and Mark Strong were good supporting cast members, though I felt like Strong was under used given his potential.  This is the first time I've seen Taron Egerton in a film and I'm sure it won't be the last.  He did a good job making Eggsy a likable lead.  Though I wasn't overly impressed with his acting abilities, I look forward to see what else he can do.  I've even heard his name thrown around this week as possibly a candidate for the new Spider-Man.

While Vaughn is not one of my favorite directors I enjoy that all of his films seem so different from each other.  Kingsman: The Secret Service is nothing like X-Men: First Class, which is not like Kick-Ass, which is not like Layer Cake.  If I go see a Martin Scorsese film I know what to expect, but Vaughn always seems to be changing up his style.  This film is similar to Kick-Ass, but with both films being based off Mark Millar comics you can't really blame Vaughn for that.

I think if I walked into this movie without a preconception about what it was supposed to be I might have liked it more.  I may even have to go back and re-watch it again just for perspective purposes.  But either way I still think it's entertaining.  My wife came out of the film saying, "I want to visit London."  I came out of the film saying, "I want to buy a double-breasted suit."

RATING:  B-