Kingsman: The Golden Circle Review

Kingsman: The Golden Circle Review

Joe Bozzella, Staff Writer

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is the sequel to the 2014 surprise hit adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic, Kingsman: The Secret Service, and returns director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, Stardust) in a movie that while extremely fun, fails to live up to the heights of the original. The film begins with a great action set-piece in a small London cab with Taron Egerton’s Eggsy in a brawl with thought-to-be dead but now cybernetically enhanced Charlie, played by Edward Holcroft. This brilliantly starts the movie in the right direction and feels like the fun, over-the-top violence of the first movie but is grounded in some semblance of reality. Egerton is absolutely magnetic to watch again and his charisma, quick wit and everyman quality make him the ideal face of this franchise and a solid action star. The plot of the movie kicks into high-gear when Julianne Moore’s sadistic villain, who is one of the weaker points of the film, destroys Kingsman headquarters and sends Eggsy and Merlin, played brilliantly by the always wonderful Mark Strong, to Kentucky in order to seek out help from the Kingsman’s American counterpart, the Statesman.

While on a paper a great idea, the Statesman are heavily underutilized to the point that it feels like their inclusion is totally unnecessary. The only member of this organization that has a meaty (pun intended) role in the film is Agent Whiskey, played with just a genuine coolness by Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones, Narcos). Pascal gets the opportunity to show off his stellar action chops in two of the best action scenes of the movie. Shockingly, Jeff Bridges and Channing Tatum also play members of the Statesman, but they are barely in the movie, totaling only about 10 minutes of combined screen time but are setup to have much larger parts in the sequel. Halle Berry also appears as the Statesman’s resident tech genius, and she is just “fine” in the role and does not stand out enough in a good or bad way.

Even though the action sequences are bigger and there are more stars in the cast, the enhanced budget of this movie did not add to it at all. The first film was so inventive and fresh that it completely shocked the audience at how surprisingly good it was. While not bad by any sense, this movie just does not feel as creative as the previous one. Even though Samuel L. Jackson’s villain in the first one was the weakest point of that movie, Julianne Moore’s antagonist is surprisingly worse. This has to be attributed to both the script and Moore because she is not really given much to do in the film but Moore still comes across as way to “hammy” (pun also intended) and not interesting enough.

While not as good as the first film, Kingsman: The Golden Circle is still an extremely entertaining film and will hopefully do well enough for more adventures in this brilliant universe that Matthew Vaughn has translated on-screen.

 

Kingsman: The Golden Circle: 7.25 out of 10

Photo Credit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4649466/