Kingsman: The Golden Circle

•             R
•             Action/Adventure
•             US Release:  September 22, 2017
•             Runtime:  2 hours 21 minutes
•             Directed by Matthew Vaughn
•             Written by Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn
•             Starring Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Julianne Moore, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Pedro Pascal, Halle Berry, Edward Holcroft
•             Grade:                         B
•                                           It’s good!

 

Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and Merlin (Mark Strong) find themselves adrift when their headquarters is destroyed and the other Kingsman agents murdered. At the same time, the world is held hostage by a criminal organization called the Golden Circle who have spread poisoned drugs across the globe. Eggsy and Merlin stumble across their American counterparts – Statesman – and join forces with them in an attempt to take down the Golden Circle and their eccentric leader Poppy (Julianne Moore).

I enjoyed the first Kingsman movie, although I didn’t rave about it like so many other reviewers at the time. It was a fun, light-hearted romp that wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. The Golden Circle is pretty much the same thing: a fun, light-hearted romp that isn’t meant to be taken seriously. It is filled with hilarious moments, quirky characters, a fantastically comical cameo from a famous singer, and some incredible action sequences. It is also an extremely well-shot film with gorgeous cinematography and several over-the-top action shots similar to the church shoot-out in The Secret Service.

The characters are enormously entertaining. The absurdity of Julianne Moore’s Poppy parallels the ridiculousness of Samuel Jackson’s Valentine from The Secret Service, and the film is all the better for it. Poppy’s “sinister” hideout and use of a hamburger grinder must be seen to be believed. All the actors were clearly having fun with their characters and put in strong performances, although Halle Berry seemed a little out of place and Channing Tatum had surprisingly little screen time. Pedro Pascal and Julianne Moore were my favorites here, with Pascal’s Whiskey going down smooth and Moore’s Poppy capturing pure insanity.

Like The Secret Service, The Golden Circle was not a perfect movie. It was longer than it needed to be, and it commits the cardinal sin of sequels trying to live up to the original by attempting to cram too many characters and subplots into the film. The convoluted storyline with all these plots and characters unfortunately slowed down the film in several places, leading to an erratic pacing that was occasionally quite jarring. I also couldn’t help but feel like they were turning these characters into quasi-super-heroes rather than highly-skilled secret agents, and that was disappointing.

All in all, though, I found The Golden Circle to be just as entertaining as its predecessor, although I admit the first film was probably a slightly better movie. If they had trimmed the runtime and removed some of the plots and characters, The Golden Circle would have been a perfectly outrageous frolic instead of the moderately entertaining diversion it turned out to be.