Kingsman: The Golden Circle

This movie feels familiar, and on two counts it is.

The Golden Circle is the sequel to the unexpected success story Kingsman: The Secret Service, which was a humorous satire of spy movie tropes with serious undertones mixed in. It knew when to be serious and when to be so serious it was funny. That, combined with some excellent cinematography, made The Secret Service a thoroughly enjoyable film.

The Golden Circle has all of these things as well, but while still fun it just comes off feeling like a lesser imitation of the original.

Which is where the second count of familiarity comes in: 2017 had another one of these sequels repeat the same formula with lesser results, namely Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Curiously, both original films (Kingsman: The Secret Service and Guardians of the Galaxy) premiered in 2014 with both sequels coming out this year.

Now, that's not to say that Guardians Vol. 2 wasn't fun, and The Golden Circle has plenty of fun as well.

The film finds the Kingsman on the receiving end of a ruthless Julianne Moore as Poppy, a leader of a drug cartel who wants all drugs to be legalized. Her leverage: her drugs will kill all of its users, of which there are hundreds of millions worldwide. With the Kingsmen's UK resources destroyed, it's up to Taron Egerton's Eggsy and Mark Strong's Merlin to team up with the Statesmen, the US intelligence service featuring Jeff Bridges's Champ, Channing Tatum's Tequila, and Halle Berry's Ginger Ale.

There are fast-paced, well-shot action scenes throughout, as with the original Kingsman, the standout being the taxi chase at the beginning. The dialogue is fun, but it hits a few sour notes along the way, especially in its parodying of a certain political figure which comes off as ham-fisted and forced.

The pacing of this film is a problem. At 2 hours 21 minutes, it definitely feels too long, especially when there are one too many big set pieces that feel like they should be the stage for the finale but end up being not.

Finally, there's a right way and a wrong way to do callbacks to the previous film in a sequel. It's OK to be overt, as long as it's balanced with other, more subtle references as well. Unfortunately, The Golden Circle tends to pound you over the head with callbacks, including literally splicing in footage from the first film in reference to characters who are supposed to be important, but for the life of me you can't possibly remember where they popped up in the first film unless you watch it right before seeing this one.

Overall, I would say that there is nothing truly objectionable about this film (although throwing in lots of F-Bombs doesn't automatically equal comedy), but this film may just serve as a reminder of a much more solid film that came before it rather than standing on its own merits.

First movie was great fun, this one is utterly awful. Rubbish plot, don't get me started with the implantation scene at Glastonbury - wtf? Stupid film, terrible characters and I can't believe I watched it. Do not waste your time.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is one of the surprise hit of 2015. It's unexpectedly good, with great humor, acting, action, and chemistry with other actors. So when director Matthew Vaughn decides to do a follow-up, I was pretty excited to see Eggsy and co. kicking ass once again. Being dubbed as a "proper" spy movie, the movie has since build a lot of excitement, but does it lived up to the hype?

The answer, is a simple no.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is indeed enjoyable, but it has plenty of flaws that makes the movie fail to deliver it's promise as a "proper" spy movie.

To start, everyone did very well in delivering their roles. Taron Egerton once again stole women's hearts as the likable Eggsy. Colin Firth returns as Harry Hart and his reintroduction is actually made sense imo, and he did a great job portraying him. Mark Strong did a great job as Merlin. Hally Berry, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Pedro Pascal also did a great job, though I'll admit that Channing Tatum's character is just a simple plot device. Julianne Moore as Poppy, though not menacing, also did a very good job. The biggest surprise is Elton John. He's the "Joker" in the movie, and he did very well.

The action scenes were over-the-top, sometimes idiotic, but very enjoyable, though this brings to one of my cons. The cinematography is fantastic it's very well shot, though the action scenes has plenty of angle cuts, and the editing was also great.

But, as stated before, the flaws in the movie makes the movie fail to meet our expectations. Most of this is because the terrible marketing campaign, that reveals some of the twists and turns of the movie that should have worked (even Matthew Vaughn agrees). The CGI is mostly used to blend several cuts into seemingly one single shot, and despite it actually worked in the first movie, it failed here because the transition is so noticeable. The action scenes were also over- stylized, featuring more slow-fast- zoom camera-work that again, worked on the first, but failed here because it's overused. There's also a sex scene that I felt out of place, and it's most likely brings a lot of controversy. A character (nope, not Tatum's) in this movie is also very bad in terms of her character because it serves nothing but motivation for Eggsy to save the world again, and the worst part, is that this character is not even a important character in the first movie, but she has more screen time than some of the main characters from the first movie and even the new characters as well.

(SPOILER ALERT. not really, but if you think it was, there you go) Also, the movie takes a unnecessary and questionable move by killing not one, but TWO main characters from the first movie (three, if you include another memorable thing from the first movie), in which one felt very unnecessary, and the other felt like the character has to die.

Overall, the movie is entertaining, indeed. But the movie lost it's charm, and just nowhere near as good as the first one. For casual moviegoers, this is an enjoyable movie, but for a Kingsman fan like me, it's disappointing.

Final Score: 7/10

The first Kingsman was very good and the second part didn't disappoint either. The action and effects were comparable with the first movie but think the story of the second movie was not that good. The movie had a nice pace of action from start to end and the acting was very good.

In the first movie Samual L. Jackson was outstanding as the bad guy but think this movie lacked someone like that.

I hated to see such great actors coming together in a pretty bad movie. The plot was silly and some of the characters were overdone and equally silly (Poppy). The Elton cameo was good for the first scene then was way over done. So many things wrong after a pretty good first movie. Please don't make another one.