Now in theaters
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Halle Berry, Elton John, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges
The most fascinating mystery at the center of Kingsman: The Golden Circle, did have me very much in suspense. In the theater, I heard a light trilling sound, and for very much of the film I couldn’t figure out if it was the air conditioner, the projector, or a sleeping audience member. I had plenty of time to ponder, considering the film was over-stuffed with action scenes so cartoonishly stylized they verged on boring. I never was able to eliminate any of the possibilities, though I started to doubt the human element sometime during the second act when I heard the following exchange behind me:
“Are you enjoying this?”
(long pause)
“[Sigh]. Not really.”
That summed up my experience as well. Kingsman: The Golden Circle isn’t all bad, but it’s often really bad, and it’s rarely good. After an attack wipes out all the other Kingsmen, Eggsy (Egerton) and Merlin (Strong) set out to find out who’s responsible for their destruction. To do this, they have to track down their American cousins, the Statesmen, which is a fun way to work Bridges and Tatum into the cast. The introduction of Tatum, or “Tequila” here, is a fun one, and immediately you start to see how the sequel will shape up: Eggsy and Tequila will team up to bring down the bad guys, and Tatum will bring all kinds of fun to the film, right?
Not quite. Tatum (Bridges, too) is inexplicably put on the bench, and the charismatic American Eggsy and Merlin hit the road with turns out to be Whiskey, played by Pedro Pascal. I loved Pascal in Game of Thrones, but Whiskey turns out to be cartoonish, and in turn, pretty boring. Before heading out, we get the return of Harry Hart (Firth), which would have been quite the surprise if he hadn’t been featured prominently in both trailers and the massive theater lobby display. How he survived Kingsmen: The Secret Service is pretty much unexplained, and now he has a bad case of really convenient amnesia – at least until the script is ready to move on to the action, at which point it all comes back to him! Funny how that works.
The villain behind all the machinations is Poppy Adams (Moore), an American-born drug czar living in exile, at least until she can coerce the US to legalize drugs, which would allow her cartel, the titular Golden Circle, to be a legitimate American conglomerate. There’s a generic Bond-villainesque plot to do that, but unlike its predecessor, it seems lazily imagined and, overall, pretty dumb.
“Lazily imagined” and “pretty dumb” goes for the entire film, really. It plays like a sequel that mimics the superficial aspects of the first movie, completely missing the real wit and tone that made it so much fun. It’s frankly difficult to believe that Matthew Vaughn could have directed both. The Secret Service had some racy jokes that satirized the sexual appetites of James Bond, but they worked. In The Golden Circle, the raciness is ramped up in one understandably controversial scene, but it seems to be aiming for cheap titillation instead. It’s an uncomfortable moment made worse by its cinematography choices – you’re fully aware as you’re watching it that this scene is shot for 14 year old boys, dumb ones at that.
That being said, it’s not a complete train wreck. Some of the action scenes at least shoot the par established by the first one. Maybe they’re not as witty, but they’re interesting. The climactic shootout is as entertaining as any action sequence in The Secret Service. Egerton is still likable as Eggsy, and while he’s still not exactly a revelation as an actor, he’s as solid here as he was the first time out. Mark Strong delivers fine performances with regularity, and he adds a much-needed bit of heart to the movie. His scenes are some of the best. Perhaps the best surprise was Elton John’s role as… Elton John. Kidnapped by Poppy and made to perform nightly in his old 70’s stage costumes, Captain Fantastic gets a chance to be silly, fun, and badass. Sir Elton’s are the scenes where The Golden Circle most closely resembles its predecessor. They were absurd enough for me to laugh out loud on more than one occasion.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle was, ultimately, a massive disappointment. The script vacillates between predictable and dumb. At one point, there’s a surprise loyalty reveal that’s hardly a surprise. At another, there’s a touching self-sacrifice undercut by my near-certainty that it was completely avoidable. I was quite the fan of Kingsman: The Secret Service. It stands as perhaps the most fun classic-style Bond movie I’ve ever seen. As Daniel Craig’s 007 had a more serious, modern-action tone, it left a void, and The Secret Service ably filled it. To poke fun at Bond, you have to understand and love Bond, and you could sense Vaughn’s affection for the legendary superspy and the glam-spy genre in general. As you watch The Golden Circle, that affection is no longer evident. It plays more like a spoof, but packaged like a satire. There are glimmers of fun, like the performances of Elton and Mark Strong, Eggsy and Merlin’s uncovering of the Statesmen, and Bruce Greenwood appearing in yet another film as the President of the US, but they’re never much more than glimmers. It winds up feeling longer than it is, and gets boring during some action scenes. When you’re supposed to be a fun action movie, those are pretty unforgivable sins.
Is it Watchlist-worthy? Nope.