My second movie of 2017 was something of a palette cleanser from the first one. While Kingsman: The Secret Service (hereafter referred to as Kingsman) is not an exceptional movie, it is a capably made action film, with standout lead performances by Taron Edgerton (who I first discovered thanks to this film, and is clearly a star in the making), Mark Strong, and Colin Firth (in an unexpected turn as an action star).
While I describe Kingsman as “capable”, that should not be taken as a slight – capably made action movies that manage to occupy my attention for their full length are increasingly hard to find, and while there were elements to this movie that I found distasteful or distracting (Samuel L. Jackson’s annoying lisp comes to mind here), the action was fun to watch (the church shootout, the skydiving sequence) and mostly overcame those flaws.
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