Kingsman: The Secret Service is a fun take on the action spy genre. It recognizes the greats (like Bond, Bourne and U.N.C.L.E) and respects them while stretching its legs across the line with new material and a good dose insanity.

Kingsman is an old British Secret Service with only a few active agents (referred to as Knights). When one is killed in action, the recruitment process starts to find a replacement. So begins the movie (and the recruitment) when “Lancelot” is killed on a rescue mission. Turns out, his mission reveals a population culling plot by technology billionaire Richmond Valentine.

Unbeknownst to Gary “Eggsy” Unwin, his father was a Kingsman, killed when Eggsy was a very young boy. Harry Hart (codename: Galahad) has kept tabs on Eggsy due to his father saving his life. Their paths cross at a crucial time in the now twenty-something year olds life, and Harry thinks Eggsy has what it takes to join the service.

So we have all the check marks for a spy movie. Cool and classy heroes, awesome tech/spy gear, hidden bases, double crosses and a villain with a high death toll plot that has to be stopped.  Mix this all together and you have one of the most enjoyable action movies I’ve seen in awhile.

I found a lot to like in Kingsman. Great characters to start. Colin Firth as Harry does a wonderful job as a suave badass and a great father figure to Eggsy. Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is really likable right from the start and gets better as his character grows on screen. He’s a good kid given a tough hand whose world is blown open when he hears the truth about his dad. Not only are we watching a spy being made, but a gentleman as well (the wardrobe in this movie is legit impressive).

Samuel L Jackson has fun being Valentine and I appreciate the thought behind him and his plot (also like the nods and discussions about spies and their nemesis’). His right hand woman, Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), is completely awesome. She’s got prosthetic legs that she uses as weapons (adding a new level of lethal to Thai kickboxing) and is a joy to watch whenever she is on screen.

Talking about Gazelle brings me to the action. Kingsman is based on the comic book, The Secret Service. by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. As such, the fights and violence are completely over the top. Crazy fight choreography with all manners of destruction. When someone gets shot or stabbed, you see it. There is a set piece that takes place in a church that is one long take of what can only be described as carnage. It’s a hold on for your dear life kind of presentation that enjoys its mayhem, but wisely curbs the uber violence in favor for a more stylized choice (heads explode in this movie, but it’s not gross).

Director  Matthew Vaughn and his crew have made a love letter to one of cinemas favorite genres. It’s smart, funny, sexy and rated R for good reason. If you’re looking for a wild and goofy time at the movies, I say go for Kingsman (please do, I want to see another one)!

What a fun horror movie! As Above So Below turned out to be way better than I thought it was going to be. We go along on a expedition underneath Paris into the catacombs where the remains of 6 million people lay arranged in macabre shrines or otherwise stacked like long forgotten debris. While it’s the perfect setting for a horror movie, why would anyone go wandering around down there alone?

Treasure! More specifically, the Philosopher’s Stone, the legendary holy grail of alchemy. The Stone is said to be able to turn base metals into gold and has incredible powers of rejuvenation, including immortality. I love alchemist lore from watching Full Metal Alchemist, so having that hook turned out to be a real draw for me.

Scarlett is obsessed with finding the Philosopher’s Stone to finish her late father’s work. She gets a young man named Benji to document the last leg of the journey and finds an old flame (George) to help her translate a major piece of the puzzle that she nearly died to get her hands on. Soon, they believe they have found where Nicolas Flemel put the stone, in a hidden section of the catacombs under Paris. With three guides who say they know their way around, they go in together. It isn’t long before things get weird. And then crazy dangerous. There’s a reason this thing was hidden away hundreds of feet below ground generations ago.

This journey to the outer rim of hell is presented as footage captured from the cameras the characters brought with them. While in the  “found footage” genre, the movie doesn’t stick to any presentation rule. It’s more like you’re going with them and jumping from camera to camera to get the best view of what’s going on as it’s happening. It’s kind of like being a character and a omnipresent observer at the same time. I think it works well, as once the movie goes underground, you’re crammed in with this group feeling like if they don’t get out, neither will you. There’s a Dante’s Inferno tilt to the movie mixed into the lore of the Philosopher’s Stone that I think worked really well together.

The darkness, weird audio and the unrelenting claustrophobia really sell the tension and fear. There are some crazy good ideas in As Above So Below, the creativity was a blast to watch (kudos to the special effects work) and direction is often great (absolutely loved the last shot).  I liked all the characters and aside from them reacting to the early crazy stuff too calmly (and continuity problems with people getting wet and dry), it all felt believable.

The Descent (2009) is the easiest comparison to this movie, but I think that’s much more of a monster movie than this. The motivation and history used for As Above So Below make it stand on it’s own and totally worth checking out. Of the horror movies I’ve seen recently, I dug this as much as Afflicted and VHS 2. Remember, the only way out is down!

Sounding

Hale gave Ava a much bigger scare last week than I thought. Thinking her cover was about to blown to Boyd, Ava tried to pull a runner. With just a few bucks and no real plan, she tried to get a new car from Ellstin Limehouse. Frantic to get things back in order, Raylan gets Constable Bob Sweeny to track her down before she can get too far and ensures that Albert Fekus isn’t going to reveal that Ava is a CI to Duffy and Hale. Boyd is still gung-ho on breaking into the vault and looks for help in a rather risky person, Avery is now more than annoyed that he can’t buy up anymore property thanks to some meddling. That fortunately puts Calhoun in the cross hairs for giving out information he shouldn’t have.

The three moving pieces of the show have been spinning like tops right next to each other for a few episodes now. I can almost taste the tension in the air. With seven episodes left, I can’t really see how this is going to pan out yet. It feels like the collision is happening really soon, but if it happens in the next 2 episodes, what’s left to explore? And if it doesn’t, the build up may feel like it’s going too long. We keep bumping into the same walls. Ava feels like jumping ship everyday, Duffy and Hale are swooping around like vultures and Boyd is slowly trying to get a working plan in order. With Avery being poked so much by Raylan, it can’t be much longer before he acts to take some people out. Raylan just wants to finally catch Boyd, but he’s really on a timer to get it done now.

The first Purge movie left little mark on me. I wrote two sentences about it. It was made for next to nothing and pulled in nearly $100 million at the box office worldwide, so it managed to get a sequel. I have no idea how The Purge did so well, I can’t believe word of mouth didn’t kill it. But here we are and as all the buzz I heard about it said, Anarchy is a much better movie.

The Purge: Anarchy is what the first movie should have been. Way more interesting, way more engaging. It’s the exact same premise as the first (once a year, from 7pm to 7am, all crimes including murder are legal in America. The Purge is a holiday), but it follows three groups of people who’s paths intersect.

“Sergeant” is a man armed to the teeth with a kitted out car to accomplish his mission. Eva and Cali, mother and daughter, get pulled out of their home by an organized group wearing combat gear. Shane and Liz are a couple who get stranded downtown by a different group of organized masked men who seem to be abducting instead of killing as well.

With these characters, they each come from different areas and circumstances. There’s a lot more meat to this movie than the first. Anarchy takes a bigger picture exploring the wealth disparity and class warfare that is growing in the US. The reasons, effects and new mutations of the Purge come to light. While there is a significant amount of murder and mayhem in this movie, the most disturbing part is thinking that something like this actually happening doesn’t seem all that far fetched. Now that I think of it, The Purge is the American take of Battle Royale.

The Purge is this crazy system put in place by those that are supposed to know what’s best for the country (and they were voted into government). One of my favorite parts of this movie is that rational people are starting to fight back. This Purge is the 6th one to happen and the growing dissent is taking an active approach to stopping the madness. A revolution from those being crushed must happen to change the system. The set up for the third movie is an exciting one.

I can’t think of many movies that their sequel was so much better than the original. The Purge is a good idea on paper, it just didn’t come together right. Anarchy is the execution matching the idea. By all means, skip watching the first. You won’t miss a thing. In fact, it’s really easy to just forget the first exists, just call Anarchy the first Purge movie.

The Trash and the Snake

This episode turned out to be more set up than any major moves. Raylan has put things together: Avery is buying up land for potential marjiuana farms. He’s betting on the future legalization and wants to have the land to grow huge crops. By out the folks for cheap->profit. He’s going for it at all costs, if an owner says no too many times, they get into a rather horrific accident. So Raylan, being the good guy, isn’t going to stand for this guy stomping on his hometown for profit at any cost. He has a fantastic confrontation with him at Loretta McCready’s house. Huge bonus points for getting Dickie Bennett back, even if it was for only a short scene.

Ava spent the day with Hale, who is basically the combination of a pit viper and a bloodhound. She’s a complete nut with an ax to grind so she’s super dangerous. Hale implied that she knows about Ava’s arrangement with Raylan which Ava (rightfully) freaks out about. She’s managed to keep it together with Boyd, but this new angle of pressure isn’t going to  help any.

Boyd is still on the path to rip off Avery with Hale and Duffy. He knows where and what kind of safe he needs to break into, but he needs a new demolition source since his was shut down last episode. He find one through Duffy and…they gotta find another one. Don’t do drugs folks, it can make you absent minded when you really need to be paying attention.

That leaves us with the heist still being in the early planning stages and Raylan making it clear to Avery that he’s not going to get what he wants (for the first time in his life?). Hale might be swooping around Ava, but I think Raylan has the biggest target on him right now.

John Wick is about as straight forward of an action flick as you can get. Someone crosses a line and bodies start stacking up for the next hour and twenty minutes. Retired assassin John Wick crosses paths with Iosef Tarasov shortly after his beloved wife has died. Iosef is the maniac and blithering idiot son of Viggo Tarasov, who was one of Wick’s employers. Iosef doesn’t know who John Wick is (or was) when he meets him at a gas station and after feeling slighted, follows him home. Iosef and his hired muscle go on to quite possibly do the worst things you could do to a man. Big mistake. Revenge drives Wick to come at Iosef like the grim reaper while Viggo does everything he can to try and save his son’s life.

While the movie is about as simple as they come and everything is laid out in 15 minutes, sometimes that’s all you need. John Wick just wants to be an action movie, it isn’t concerned with being anything else. The sides are drawn right away, those on Wick’s side are cool, everyone else is dead. Once he gets into gear, we go from location to location with another great action set piece.

The director, Chad Stahelski, has been in the movie stuntman game since 1991 and it shows (check out his resume, it’s stacked. He’s got a long history working with Keanu Reeves).  There is some downright phenomenal stunt work, fight choreography and action direction on display. Guns, blades, multiple martial art styles, car chases, it’s all here and it isn’t shot and edited together like the crew was trapped in a three month long fever dream. You can see everything, the framing and continuity all flows together with long, wide takes. It’s easy to see and understand what’s going on (and to who) when mayhem breaks out. Keanu did most of his own stunt work and teaming up with many of the Matrix team really shows in his comfort and execution. Really impressive stuff. One of the things that really stuck out to me is that when cars crash, they don’t explode. I’m so used to Michael Bay style fireworks and gas bombs for everything that it was rather refreshing to see a car just smash up.

John Wick is a grounded action movie (aside from a comic book style hotel that caters to assassins) like the old Die Hard movies. It seems plausible, the hero takes a beating and at the end we all feel better knowing that justice has been dished out to scum bags. Looking for a solid action movie? Take a ride with Mr. Wick.