Barack Obama's head explodes in a flurry of colour. Colin Firth goes crazy and murders a bunch of white supremacists in a church. The hero celebrates beating the bad guy by having anal with a princess. Yep, this is Mark Millar and Matthew Vaughn through and through. Kingsman (gifted a sequel enabling subtitle late in production) is hyper-violent and goes to some pretty dark psychological and social places, but is so unashamed about it all it's hard not to be won over. The deep-south massacre might be a bit too on-the-nose, engineered to get the audience cheering at the perceived justice of the bloodbath, but given how unpolitical the rest of the film is, it you can't really fault it. The overall message - that being a gentleman and one's social class are unrelated - even borders on wholesome. There is the question of originality - Kingsman is fresh as a spy spoof, but its narrative (regular guy from the "real" world becomes an unexpected hero) bears a strong resemblance to Kick-Ass. You hope that, as Vaughn features various action moves that are direct parallels to those executed by Hit Girl, that this is a conscious nod by the director to his previous film, rather than showing him and co-screenwriter Jane Goldman falling into type. But even if it is, there's no escaping the unbridled joy that went into presenting it all.
