Kingsman: The Secret Service

The story of a super-secret spy organization that recruits an unrefined but promising street kid into the agency's ultra-competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius.

Matthew Vaughn's spy send-up lands as exhilarating, trashy fun for many critics, who found its gleeful irreverence refreshing — but a notable contingent pushed back hard, arguing the film mistakes reactionary Tory values and gratuitous violence for genuine subversion. The fault line runs less between good and bad than between critics who surrendered to the ride and those who felt the film's winking self-congratulation masked an ugly, conservative core.