One of the ways to escape studying and other pseudo-adult responsibilities is to go to the Holland 7 or local AMC Theater. Last week, I saw “Kingsman” and I felt like it didn’t live up to the hype it was building up to. [Spoilers ahead]
First off, I’ll start by saying what I liked about this movie (not much). The scenery was extremely realistic and the 1997 scene was a good start to the movie, but it all goes down from there… I liked the stunt-craft in the movie, there were some pretty unbelievable dodges and moves, but the movie doesn’t feel as well as “Skyfall” or a comparable movie. The ending was a decent if not long overdue ending.
The rest of movie feels pretty rhetorical and inflated. The action is just too much too soon. The candidate tests seem to be there to purely fill in some of the movie time, and the movie was full of overused plot elements. I mean really, the evil villain explaining the plot to his/her helper and them killing the helper. Really? The mid-credits scene was something I think the directors should have deemed important and emotional enough that it could have been placed in the near-end of the movie, instead of where it was placed. The violence was good, but it fails too hit the violence sweet spot. Too me, the violence felt stretched and put in as a placeholder and it doesn’t fit in with the stunt-craft and other aspects. The gun battles and fistfights seem like rehearsed robotic scenes.
My major concern is that the agent was a kid. Although that isn’t bad in itself, it cuts out the possibility of love scenes such as those in James Bond movies. And given the R rating, I feel like those would have been necessary to balance out the other aspects of the film. Any romance that was in there was insubstantial, and there was not much dating/love between Eggsy and Roxy. I watched this move highly expecting a good mix of action, spydom, violence, and romance. However, I found the movie lacking on romance, and plenty of violence and action.
The movie felt kind cliched with with elements pieced from other movies and the sum of the parts were worst than the parts themselves. The plot was basically an old-fashioned plot retrofitted by 21st century elements, and I don’t think the reason the plot was hatched is a compelling reason for Valentine to put the evil plan in action.
In conclusion, the movie fails to revitalize the spy genre, a genre that was set nearly 50 years ago by James Bond films. The high-tech hideout and weaponry doesn’t save the movie was being a blunder, even by low-quality standards.