Kingsman (2015)

“Kingsman” really wants you to believe that it’s different. It’s not like all the other spy movies, you know. Except it is exactly like all the other spy movies. It’s just like James Bond. The heroes are dull, vulgar white guys and the villains are nonwhite while women remain accessories at best. Right.

For all its style, its flash and its humor, “Kingsman” insists on shooting itself in the foot by believing it’s revolutionary while being spectacularly ordinary. That’s a shame. The premise is certainly promising and Matthew Vaughn clearly knows what he’s doing behind the camera.

The failures of “Kingsman” aren’t accidental; no, when this film goes off the rails it willfully chooses to do so. Sure, we get the ‘satisfaction’ of a church filled with hateful bigots murdering each other and go face to face with a (more) villainous version of Mark Zuckerberg. That’s fun enough, but there’s just not much more to “Kingsman.”

With an opportunity to bring a female lead into the fold, “Kingsman” instead decides to allow her trot along with the plot rather than truly partake in its action. The final act of the final act (whatever, that’s a thing) is all about our unsympathetic, unlikable male lead and his old white man cohort helping taking down the nonwhite villains, which sounds familiar if you’ve lived on Earth for the past thousand years.

All style and no substance would be an unfair criticism of “Kingsman.” There is certainly substance to be had here, it’s just that it’s a substantive master class is boredom. The spy genre could use a breath of fresh air, and all “Kingsman” has to offer is carbon monoxide.