10 Movie Moments You've Always Misunderstood

7. The Church Scene Isn't "Badass", It's Horrifying - Kingsman: The Secret Service

What Everybody Thinks

If you ask your average moviegoer about the greatest action sequences of the last decade, they'll inevitably bring up the infamous church battle from Kingsman.

In the scene, Harry Hart (Colin Firth) slaughters a church full of hateful rednecks who have been turned murderous by Richmond Valentine's (Samuel L. Jackson) tainted, mind-controlling SIM cards. Yup.

The scene, set to Lynyrd Skynyrd's iconic "Freebird", sees Hart killing these rabid racists and homophobes for three slickly-shot, gore-filled minutes, and by most accounts, it's an incredibly awesome, even badass scene.

The Truth

Nobody can argue with Matthew Vaughn's stylistic filmmaking here, but most audiences have also totally glossed over how utterly horrifying this sequence truly is.

Sure, hate groups are human trash, but do they really deserve to be brutally murdered en masse by a ruthlessly efficient hitman, especially when they're not even acting of their own accord?

There's even a brief moment near the end of the fight where Harry himself seems to realise this - a grenade detonates and snaps him out of his blood-thirsty frenzy for a few seconds before he gets back to business.

Vaughn is certainly responsible for the scene's complete lack of tonal balance, but if you can look past the dope music, neat violence and smooth camerawork, the amount of undeserved murder on display is really quite nauseating.