Skip to footer

'Kingsman: The Secret Service': Here's what critics are saying about the action movie

Is 'Kingsman' worth checking out? The movie stars actors Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, and Samuel L. Jackson.

|
Jaap Buitendijk/20th Century Fox/AP
'Kingsman: The Secret Service' stars Colin Firth (l.) and Taron Egerton (r.).

For those who didn’t want to see one of the multiple romantic films being released this weekend, the action film “Kingsman: The Secret Service” was another option for a night at the movies.

However, “Kingsman,” which centers on a teenager (Taron Egerton) recruited for a secret spy organization by one of its members (Colin Firth), has received middling to negative reviews from critics so far. 

Monitor film critic Peter Rainer gave the movie a B- and wrote that Samuel L. Jackson of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” playing the villain is the highlight of the film. 

“Camping it up, Jackson is hilarious,” Rainer wrote. 

The film currently has a score of 58 out of 100 on the review aggregator site Metacritic. Jordan Hoffman of the Guardian was one critic who found the film passable, awarding it four stars out of five. 

“Wildly enjoyable,” Hoffman wrote. “The spirit of 007 is all over this movie, but Vaughn’s script has a licence to poke fun… the overall vibe is sheer glee… The action scenes delight with shock humor.” 

And Variety critic Peter Debruge wrote of the movie, “’Kingsman’ brings the irreverence back to the British spy genre… gleefully pushing audiences’ favorite elements… Few of the year’s films have been so openly covetous of material possessions, which sits oddly with the movie’s open resentment of extreme wealth.”

However, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis wrote, “As this bludgeoning movie grinds to a halt, its gears clogged by viscera and narrative overkill, even those who enjoy go-go gore may end up yearning for the soft touch and subtleties of Guy Ritchie… The problem is that Mr. Vaughn has no interest in, or perhaps understanding of, violence as a cinematic tool… his lack of modulation ruins ‘Kingsman’… That’s too bad, because someone here has assembled a fine cast.”

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune also did not like the film's violence. 

“Silly, sadistic and finally a little galling,” Phillips wrote of the movie. “Taron Egerton is engaging… [but] If you don't like the way the action's handled in an action movie, you are in trouble… I find the jocularity of Vaughn's gamer-style violence a drag. After an hour I wanted some visual clarity and something more than a few jokes about the tropes of the spy movie genre.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'Kingsman: The Secret Service': Here's what critics are saying about the action movie
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Culture-Cafe/2015/0216/Kingsman-The-Secret-Service-Here-s-what-critics-are-saying-about-the-action-movie
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe