Kingsman: The Secret Service

A spy film built as a parody of spy films. Kingsman is an intelligence organisation attached to no state. It works from behind a tailor's shop and its agents are given Round Table names. When an agent dies a new candidate is sought. Harry proposes the son of a man who saved his life years before. Eggsy lives on an estate, has a record, and has no prospects. From there the film is a training story. A dormitory that floods, parachutes, a dog, and a group of candidates full of wealthy children. There is a technology magnate on the other side. Valentine is giving away free SIM cards worldwide and his plan is to reduce the population. What the narrative is interested in is not espionage but class: throughout, being a gentleman is presented as learned behaviour rather than a birthright, and one line says so outright. The church sequence is its most argued-over section. A massacre of several minutes built to look like one shot, running with the music. The tone is deliberately excessive. The finale, with heads bursting like fireworks, is a direct joke at the seriousness of the genre. It was the lead actor's first large film, and the actor opposite him, a name far from action roles, trained for months. The source is a comic by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong and Michael Caine are in the cast. Matthew Vaughn directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes hard humour and stylised action. Who it is not for: anyone uncomfortable with violence used as a joke; the church section pushes that line.