Kingsman - The Secret Service (2015):

Kingsman - The Golden Circle (2017):

The King’s Man (2021):

Kingsman - The Secret Service (2015)

A movie I’ve seen in cinema back in 2015. I remember being really fresh back then, it was like a cool kid action movie (similar to Kick-Ass in a lot of ways). It’s still good today, but it’s far less special.

What still stands out, however, is the “feel”. It still feels different, it’s not as fresh since a lot of high-budget movies have tried to emulate its style (through James Gunn mainly), but it still feels different enough through the “Britishness” and classiness of it.

The first act of this movie remains one of the best first acts of anything I’ve seen.

All in all, it has great moments, and the social commentary of it is really on point (even if, in the end, it boils down to “billionaire/powerful people bad”).

Kingsman - The Golden Circle (2017)

Back in 2017, during my first watch in cinema my thought was “it’s fine but the first one was far better, this one is good but leans too much into the stupid comedy”.

2025 rewatch and I have to agree with my past self. I do think in a lot of ways the idea for the story is more interesting (especially with effectively showing that the US president is the bigger bad guy - not really clever, but better than the usual/previous movie billionaire bad), but the way it’s developed is far less well executed (the last 1/3 of the movie goes on for far too long for example).

All in all, it remains inferior to the first one, but in a lot of ways had better moments.

The King’s Man (2021)

A movie that’s worse than the previous 2 films but better than most high-budget movies of the last 20 years.

One issue, however, is the pacing being weird.

The first act goes on for far too long, and the movie kind of ends in the second act where they decide to go find an important object and - they basically say “the big bad guy is here let’s finish it now”.

The main problem really is that this movie suffers from what I’ve been seeing more and more in high-budget movies: all of the actors are in their late 30s or more.

What made the first 2 movies great (especially the first one) is that you had every age range and every social class, which gave good places for social commentary and dialogue-based humor.

This one has a younger character but he’s literally the “Son of…” an aristocrat, which means there’s zero social commentary and dialogue-based humor.

Not everything should be trashed though, there are some great ideas in there and some really interesting reconstructions of historical events (through an alternate history but possible take).

All in all, not a bad movie, but it should/could have been more.

Post-Scriptum

A quick word about “Argylle (2024)”, I’ve seen it shortly after release and liked it. It’s less clever than any of the Kingsman movies, but it has some cool ideas, it’s worth a watch. 7/10

Rating and Recommendation

Kingsman - The Secret Service (2015): 7/10 - Recommended

Kingsman - The Golden Circle (2017): 6/10 - Recommended

The King’s Man (2021): 6/10 - Recommended