Rating: 3/5

Three-Word Summary: Atypical spy action

Kingsman: The Secret Service is not your typical spy movie. However, it does play off of many of the tropes of typical spy movies.

For instance, the main character is an unpolished London street urchin. However, this young man is taken in by an independent gentleman’s spy agency and trained to be a skilled agent.

Similarly, the megalomaniac villain is certainly bent on world destruction. However, this evil genius is gastrointestinally repulsed by violence.

More so, the action sequences and, in large part, the film itself are deliberately over-the-top and intentionally unrealistic.

The spy gadgets are gaudy. The fight scenes are bloodless and borderline comical. And the plot is outrageously extravagant.

However, that’s the whole point. Kingsman is meant to be a semi-serious spoof of the spy-fi genre. It’s meta at times; willing to admit that it’s “not one of those kind of movies.”

For that reason, it’s purely entertainment. Once the audience is able to fully embrace the suspension of disbelief, they are able to enjoy this obviously overblown flick.

We don’t need to wonder why the world’s super powers are willing to by into a global plot of eco-terrorism. Or why the villain’s henchman has swords for legs. It’s all just part of the fun.

In a time when action films have stuck rigorously to gritty realism, it’s never a bad thing to have one film mockingly flaunt the limits and embrace the campiness.