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Review

A star rating of 4 out of 5.

The age of the gentleman spy returns with a vengeance in director Matthew Vaughn's vibrant, irreverent caper. Cult TV show The Avengers meets Bond as Colin Firth (in brilliantly pithy form) stars as Harry Hart, a John Steed-like agent in the Kingsman organisation, whose operatives are codenamed after Round Table knights - Firth is Galahad, Michael Caine is Arthur, Mark Strong is Merlin - only with Savile Row suits and ingenious gadgets. Plotwise, it's a case of the urbane rubbing up against the urban when Hart recruits a dead colleague's tearaway teenage son (Taron Egerton) and puts him through his secret-service paces. Lying in wait for them, however, is a larger-than-life billionaire villain (Samuel L Jackson, having a ball as a megalomaniac with a lisp and an aversion to violence) and his lethally leggy henchwoman (Sofia Boutella), whose plans to take over the world would make Blofeld turn green with envy. As he did with superheroes in Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class, Vaughn injects some much-needed fun into an increasingly grim genre. He evidently loves 1960s spy flicks but, be warned, this is no Austin Powers-style spoof; there's bawdy, violent material of a more contemporary vintage here - an investigation of a redneck church ends up like a scene from The Walking Dead. Ultimately, though, light-hearted, fast-moving entertainment is the name of the game, with Firth a quite excellent action hero.

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Credits

Cast

rolename
Harry Hart / GalahadColin Firth
ArthurMichael Caine
ValentineSamuel L Jackson
Gary "Eggsy" UnwinTaron Egerton
LancelotJack Davenport
James ArnoldMark Hamill
MerlinMark Strong
GazelleSofia Boutella
MichelleSamantha Janus
RoxySophie Cookson
DeanGeoff Bell
Church leaderCorey Johnson
The InterrogatorRichard Brake
RyanTheo Barklem-Biggs

Crew

rolename
DirectorMatthew Vaughn

Details

Theatrical distributor
20th Century Fox
Released on
2015-01-30
Languages
English | Arabic | Swedish
Guidance
Violence, swearing, nudity
Available on
DVD and Blu-ray
Formats
Colour

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