The Kingsman films, for the most part, are fun action adventure films filled with espionage, action, and sharply dressed individuals. 

The first film Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), was directed by Matthew Vaughn (who directs all the other films), and is based off the comic book series, The Secret Service, by Mark Millar.

The film is about a spy named Harry Hart (AKA Galahad, played by Colin Firth) recruiting a street punk by the name of Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton) to possibly join The Kingsmen, a secret spy organization that’s above all world governments and is known by few. While that is going on, the mad man billionaire, Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), begins hatching his insidious plan to kill most of the earth’s population in order to help stop climate change. 

The film is a clear call back to old James Bond films – the British accents, the expensive suits, the fancy car, the deadly gadgets that look like everyday objects, the heavy use of  horns in the soundtrack, the over-the-top villain with the dastardly plan, and over-the-top one liners. It all screams James Bond. 

But similar to the Indiana Jones films, this actually works to the movie’s benefit, as the film cleverly updates the tropes from old spy films and modernizes them. For instance, Valentine’s right-hand woman Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) has sharp knife-like objects for legs. This is a fun callback to the James Bond trope of the main villains having a special henchmen that has some gimmick that makes them more dangerous than your average mook. 

The acting is top notch. Colin Firth is a great James Bond-like character, being a prim and proper aristocrat, while at the same time able to kill a man 50 different ways without getting any blood on his suit. Taron Egerton does well selling the street punk persona of Eggsy, while at the same time showing how he’s smarter and more skilled than most people give him credit for. 

Samuel L. Jackson nails it as the over-the-top bond villain. What’s great is that there are entire scenes where he has to go on villain monologues while faking a lisp and not once does he crack or slip from character.

A special shout out has to go to Merlin (Mark Strong), the Q analogue who gathers all the intel and gives the Kingsmen agents what they need to complete their missions. Strong manages to be funny and intimidating in almost every scene he’s in.

The action in the film is world class,  with cinematographer George Richmond providing plenty of clever camera work and minimal cuts. It allows the audience to get invested in the action without the use of quick cuts so they know what’s going on.

What also helps the film is all the great dialogue, making almost every scene humorous.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a modern classic absolutely worth checking out if one’s at all interested in fun spy flicks with great action and witty dialogue.

Because Kingsman: The Secret Service made a boatload of money, and is a new vehicle that hadn’t yet been milked to death, it was, of course, green lit for a sequel. That sequel is  Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017).

Kingsmen (save for Eggsy and Merlin) have been completely wiped out by the new megalomaniac in town, Poppy (Julianne Moore). Poppy is the largest drug supplier of illegal narcotics on earth, and has poisoned her product in order to hold the world hostage. 

What she wants is all drugs to become legal and a presidential pardon for her and her cohorts. If she doesn’t get what she wants, she’ll withhold the antidote, causing the death of billions around the world.

In order to stop her, Eggsy and Merlin team up with their sister organization across the pond, The Statesmen. 

If the first Kingsman film felt like early Bond, over the top but not so over the top to be completely ridiculous, then this film feels like the later Bond films that had Bond go to space and ride a giant tidal wave in order to avoid a death laser. 

The film is completely over the top, with robot dogs, a 1950s town set up on an ancient Aztec site, people surviving getting shot in the head with magical healing goo, and a kidnapped Elton John being part of the reason the heroes win the day.

That being said, the film isn’t bad per se; it still has lots of good qualities. The returning actors do a great job sliding into their old characters and the new characters, while not as good as the ones in the first film, are still fine and add fun to the film.

The idea of The Statesmen is a clever idea, and it’s funny how, unlike Kingsman agents who are named after the knights of the round table, The Statesmen are named after drinks. With special mention being Tequila (Channing Tatum) and Whiskey (Pedro Pascal), the two main Statesman agents seen in the film.

Tequila is just, strange, always saying or doing something completely weird that gets a chuckle out of the audience. And Whiskey is a southern gentleman, a clever connection to the gentlemanly way the Kingsmen act.

The action is still great as in the first film, with a lot of great camera work from George Richmond to keep the action entertaining to watch.

Despite being way too over the top for its own good, Kingsman: The Golden Circle is fun to watch if one lowers their expectations a bit. 

The final film in this surprising trilogy of films is The Kings Man (2021). Unlike the previous film, this film is a prequel, explaining how the Kingsman organization came to be. 

It’s the early 20th century, a shadowy cabal is set to try to see England destroyed, and through a series of evil machinations start World War I in order to do so. To try to stop them, Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes), his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson), their maid Polly (Gemma Arterton), and their servant Shola (Djimon Hounsou) try to track down and eliminate any agents of this evil organization before it is too late.

The film has a massive tonal and pacing problem. The movie doesn’t know if it wants to be a fun but still more down-to-earth spy adventure film or a serious drama about the horrors of World War I and how pointless it all was. 

The film’s pacing is also a mile a minute. We meet Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and 90 seconds later he and his wife are shot. The film also glosses over two years of war like it’s nothing and implies that the main characters make no progress in the meantime.

The characters aren’t as memorable or fun as the ones in the previous films, with the exception of Orlando Oxford and Rasputin (Rhys Ifans). Fiennes brings his expert acting chops to every scene he’s in, selling every motion on screen. And in real life, Rasputin was a whacky enough character, so the film really didn’t have to do much to his character to make him memorable, and Rhys Ifans is clearly having the time of his life playing him, stealing and chewing up the scenes he’s in. 

Despite being too serious for its own good, there are still dramatic scenes that are well acted and expertly presented. Ralph Fiennes has some powerful and dramatic moments that actually hit pretty hard.

The problem is that these very dour and dramatic scenes don’t mix well with the action and some of the outsized characters. 

The action however is still well done and like all the Kingsman films, it has fun and unique gimmicks to make them entertaining. 

A good example of this is when Conrad and a group of British soldiers come across a group of German soldiers while in no man’s land, and both groups put down their rifles and bring out their knives and shovels. Because both groups know that if they fire off a shot, they’ll all die.

The King’s Man is a heavily flawed film, but I wouldn’t exactly call it bad, it has enough strong elements to keep it alive.

Patrick will soon begin shooting his next film, The Professor’s Man, about a secret group of students who take over the college.