Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)
When their headquarters are destroyed and the world
is held hostage, the Kingsman's journey leads them to the discovery of
an allied spy organization in the US. These two elite secret
organizations must band together to defeat a common enemy.
Director:
Matthew VaughnStars:
When the Kingsman headquarters are destroyed and the world is held
hostage, their journey leads them to the discovery of an allied spy
organization in the US called Statesman, dating back to the day they
were both founded. In a new adventure that tests their agents' strength
and wits to the limit, these two elite secret organizations band
together to defeat a ruthless common enemy, in order to save the world,
something that's becoming a bit of a habit for Eggsy...
Official Sites:
Language:
EnglishRelease Date:
20 September 2017 (Philippines) See more »Also Known As:
Kingsman: O Círculo Dourado See more »Company Credits
Production Co:
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Marv Films, Shangri-La Entertainment See more »Technical Specs
Runtime:
Sound Mix:
Dolby AtmosColor:
ColorAspect Ratio:
2.39 : 1Did You Know?
Trivia
Jeff Bridges appears completely clean-shaven with no beard and no mustache. This is the first time he appears as such since the A Dog Year (2009).Quotes
[from trailer]
Poppy: My name is Poppy Adams, CEO of the Golden Circle. We engage in an aggressive business strategy, invest in the latest technology and take strict, disciplinary action. I'm speaking to you today because our world leaders have let us all down, so we are coming out of the shadows and taking over. And to make sure no one gets in our way... Kingsman is crumpets!
Poppy: My name is Poppy Adams, CEO of the Golden Circle. We engage in an aggressive business strategy, invest in the latest technology and take strict, disciplinary action. I'm speaking to you today because our world leaders have let us all down, so we are coming out of the shadows and taking over. And to make sure no one gets in our way... Kingsman is crumpets!
Connections
Follows Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
Matthew Vaughn's sequel to his hit 2015 spy flick reteams Taron Egerton with Colin Firth and adds Julianne Moore, Channing Tatum, Halle Berry and Jeff Bridges.
When does a good thing become too much of a good thing? When is enough enough? That's the main question hovering over Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the
spirited continuation of Matthew Vaughn's disarmingly clever 2015
introduction of the bespoke-suited British secret agent that, as with
many successful series before it, has already begun to err on the side
of overkill with an unnecessarily long 141 minutes. Still, this
fleet-footed, glibly imaginative international romp stays on its toes
and keeps its wits about it most of the time, with entertaining and
pointedly U.S.-friendly cast additions that should provide an uptick
from the $414 million raked in worldwide by Kingsman: The Secret Service.
Using the James Bond-established opening
teaser template, the action-for-action's-sake curtain raiser
re-emphasizes the series' firm commitment to ignoring the laws of time
and physics as it presents a nocturnal London car chase of
beyond-the-pale preposterousness between two enemies with unknown
motives. The pyrotechnics may be impressive as the sequence tops itself
over and over again but, without rooting interest or stakes firmly
established, it feels pointless, showy and silly; presumed viewer
identification with the “good guy” is perhaps insufficiently firm to
justify this sort of very cold open.
The good guy is the unappetizingly named
“Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton), the lower-class bloke trained in
espionage, combat and, above all, sartorial style in the first outing by
gentleman spy Harry Hart (Colin Firth), who appeared to have expired
and passed the baton to Eggsy at the end.
But, in a heartening move characteristic
of the series' highly elastic definition of mortality, it doesn't take
too long for Harry to turn up again, although not quite in the tip-top
mental or sartorial condition to which he is accustomed. Still, there
are preliminaries to be disposed of: The world at this moment is being
threatened by arch-villain Poppy (Julianne Moore), a perky lady whose
sweet, wholesome looks and chirpy voice co-exist with malevolence on a
massive scale. She's the boss of the Golden Circle, the world's No. 1
drug cartel who, in the course of things, essentially blackmails the
(equally conniving) U.S. president (Bruce Greenwood, who 17 years ago
played JFK in Thirteen Days) into legalizing drugs.
With cutesy inspiration, this very nasty
lady presides over a jungle compound named Poppy Land that looks like a
1950s Middle-American theme park; she's reproduced it all, the cheery,
jukebox diner that doubles as her office, the old-time movie house,
everything she relished as a kid. And on hand to perform at her beck and
call in a grand theater is none other than Elton John (the real deal,
bedecked in outlandish feathery attire), his greatest hits occasionally
used as aural counterpoint to what's going on.
The cleverness with which John is used
extends to the highly calculated way Vaughn, along with his frequent
writing partner Jane Goldman, has conceptualized and then accoutered the
series; the format is thoroughly Bondian, the British characters are
split high/low in class (in Eggsy, it's both within the same person),
the villains are American (Samuel L. Jackson in the first outing) and
considerable shrewdness is applied to the conception and execution of
nearly every scene to make this old spy stuff feel fresh, which it
mostly does.
The wild card here is the introduction of
an entirely unexpected U.S. counterpart to the private British
espionage organization. When Poppy shockingly destroys the Kingsman
organization, including its tony Saville Row clothing shop, the lone
survivors, Eggsy and tech wizard Merlin (Mark Strong), hightail it to,
of all places, Kentucky, where Bond once found Goldfinger, Pussy Galore
and Fort Knox. But what the new crew finds is one-eyed Harry in a
comfortable padded cell and unable to recall his former exploits or draw
upon his customary expertise.
Harry is the honored guest of Statesman, a
longtime whiskey company whose folksy, shrewd gazillionaire boss (Jeff
Bridges) oversees his own staff of down-home secret operatives with
boozy names like Agent Tequila (Channing Tatum) and Agent Whiskey (Pedro
Pascal). There's a wild barroom fight scene in which some beefy
down-home boys pick a fight with the sissy-talking Brits, with Whiskey
demonstrating his special talents yielding a whip more lethal than that
of Indiana Jones. And while everyone waits to learn if Harry will
recover his memory in time to save the world (Halle Berry, as Ginger
Ale, is instrumental in overseeing this process), the macho boys
traverse the globe while millions of drug users worldwide begin coming
down with deathly symptoms induced by Poppy's drugs (and which will end
in the deaths of millions unless the U.S. president agrees to her
terms).
Goldman and Vaughn have a nifty knack of
concocting scenes that at first seem totally arbitrary and yet
eventually reveal a narrative purpose. This certainly applies to what
initially looks like a gratuitous plug for the Glastonbury Music
Festival, where Eggsy shows up and encounters a hot-to-trot babe (Poppy
Delevingne) with no evident connection to the plot. Then there's what
seems like a pointless trip to a spectacular Italian mountaintop ski
station that at first smacks of a homage to On Her Majesty's Secret Service but
then turns out to hold the potential solution to the world's great
dilemma. And Eggsy's serious romantic interest, who's cut away to
repeatedly, is none other than the princess daughter of the king and
queen of Sweden; the seemingly inconsequential scene with the latter
also has its serious, if humorously presented, intent.
There is, then, an endearingly goofy
method to the writers' fervid madness that serves the material well and,
as ever, Vaughn puts it all up on the screen with boisterous but
carefully calibrated enthusiasm. Unlike some other directors of big
franchise extravaganzas, Vaughn actually seems to prefer character,
dialogue and humor to chases and explosion, and he makes mostly very
good use of his almost invariably well-chosen actors by identifying
their appeal and drawing out their humor.
No surprise that, when the survival of
much of the world's population hangs in the balance, Harry gets his
memory back to help out, and it's in the climactic action set at Poppy
Land that Sir Elton gets to bust through musically to big dividends.
After having been decimated and physically wiped off the map, it's also
little surprise that, by the end, the Kingsman line is back and will
henceforth benefit from the addition of a brawny American partner with a
distinct Southern accent.
What seemed, at the outset, to be too,
too much finally feels quite all right by the end. Still, there are
lessons to be kept in mind: Except for the water-logged Thunderball, all the Connery Bond films ran less than two hours and were better for it, while the initial Indiana Jones and and first two Star Wars chapters were kept within a couple of minutes of two hours either way. If they can do it, future Kingsman outings certainly can, too, and would be better for it.
Final rating: 9/10 for the genre and 8/10 overall and so we have a really good sequell of the first part from 2014 which delivers fun, action, thrill, and a lot of dark and black humor.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies. And also thanks a lot to my partner IMDB and movieclips trailer channel for the support and making this review marathon possible.
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