The Kingsman = Kingsmuck

  You would think that with a cast as stellar as the one in this film it would be a complete knock out!  I really, really wanted to like this movie.  Seriously.  I was hoping that it would have the ingenuity for its genre that Shaun of the Dead had on the zombie movie genre.  The more I watched, the more I realized I just wanted not to cringe so much at the poorly edited stupidity.

The only word people seemed to know was the F-bomb, scenes that could have been poignant were stretched out by so much redundant violence that you just wanted to roll your eyes and say, "when is this part over? I get it.".  I appreciated the fact that this riffed on every kind of spy movie and novel out there.  There were various and sundry recognizable references.  I also appreciated the fact that in riffing on one aspect of society, no aspect was safe: politics, race, or religion.  If you're going to slam it, slam it all, but it needs to have a point, not senselessly hitting, slamming, shooting, and blowing up people's heads to music.  The way they filmed the scenes had so much graphic overlay and editing that it looked incredibly fake a lot of the time, almost like someone had a video game they wanted to make and created a movie just to make those effects.  The ending was horrible.  I'm going to leave it at that.

I had labeled it surprise . . . and it did . . . it sucked.  If I could re-edit it I would buy it, but as is, it's not worth it.  It really is a shame.  Colin Firth had a likeable character, Mark Strong was playing a refreshingly different role as the Quartermaster and was fantastic.  Michael Caine played a traditionally stuck up member of the old vanguard who is in charge - the sort of "M" character.  Mark Hamill, who I was extremely excited to see in a film again, didn't really hold up against the likes of playing opposite Jackson and Firth.  Samuel L. Jackson's  character Valentine's riff on stereotypical villain roles and black male villains as being portrayed as gangsters who are both smart and stupid at the same time was poignant, together with the fact that his character believed that because he didn't have his hand on an actual weapon, he wasn't responsible for the violence created by his own device.  Those kinds of references made the film more watchable, but not worth wasting time and money.  I am so disappointed in this movie.