Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) - Movie Review

Wow. That was awesome.
Kingsman: The Secret Service follows the secret spy organisation Kingsman as they try to stop megalomaniac villain Richmond Valentine in an entertaining, hilarious and all-round fun film from Matthew Vaughn of X-Men: First Class fame.
Kingsman pays homage to classic spy films with many characters filling particular roles - with Michael Caine's Arthur being Kingsman's M and Mark Strong's Merlin being the Q of the film - as well as serving as an introductory first film to a potential new franchise bringing back the OTT villains and cheesy gadgets of the classic Bond films (which now seem to be absent from current Bond films), and with a great screenplay and director at hand, Kingsman: The Secret Service proves to be a truly great film.
The cast are great, with Taron Egerton being surprisingly enduring as Eggsy and Samuel L Jackson making an on-paper rather boring villain great and hilarious to watch. Colin Firth is also brilliant as Harry Hart, although he does seem rather underused in the film despite his name and face being all of the posters and trailers, and Sophie Cookson's Roxy feels really underdeveloped compared to the rest of the characters. Michael Caine, Mark Strong, Jack Davenport and Mark Hamill are all great in the film, and they all seem to have really enjoyed working on this.
Matthew Vaughn proves to be a great action direction with the film, delivering some great moments and truly brutal moments and the screenplay is so much fun. The jokes are always great and the film does a great job at developing the story and characters.

The music from Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson is paying homage to classic spy movies, even if it isn't anything particularly original, and the film looks great – it’s clear that a lot of money was well-spent on the film.
However, the structure in the second acts falls a little, being more clunky and the whole training sequence doesn't seem like a short montage or particularly important to the plot, and doesn't strike the balance between either one to work well.
There are also some great twists in the film, which I won't spoil here but are well done in making the film more interesting and there is a particularly impactful scene towards the end. The twists also lay some interesting groundwork for possible sequels.
Overall, Kingsman: The Secret Service works as both a standalone film in its own right paying homage to classic spy movies but also as a possible franchise starter. I all came together in the end, albeit with some problems, and I really enjoyed it.