Kingsman: The Golden Circle (Dir. Matthew Vaughn, 2h 9m)

 

If Golden Circle proves anything, it's the unfortunate nature and unpredictability of making a sequel to a surprise hit; whether you liked its darkly comic spy thriller-cum-lads night out vibe or actively disliked its bloody match of blokish banter and Bond, it was undeniably a well made hit. The Golden Circle, however, is a strange mess of a film, unable to improve on the original, and tonally inconsistent in its war on drugs message, its violence and indeed on whether the world still needs spies-much like its heroes, now it's made something of itself, it's left with little else to do, and proceeds to rather outstay its welcome.



The problems begin and end, as the film does, with Gary "Eggsy" Unwin (or, as he's codenamed for much of the film before the not-exactly secret return of his mentor and uncle, Harry Hart, played by Colin Firth at his most overly British), Galahad. Eggsy is frankly a character who has little to do in this film-whilst his colleagues in Kingsman, a secretative organisation that acts to protect the United Kingdom, are offed in fairly brutal fashion early on in the film by the 50's themed villainess Poppy Adams (an admittedly high-spirited Julianne Moore), who lives in a 50s themed base, complete with diner, hairdresser and movie theatre does clearly leave him shaken for a few minutes, by the time he reaches American sister organisation Statesman, he's back to a swaggering quipping smartass.

This is really the problem with Golden Circle. Whilst it should be expected that the stakes should be higher than the first film (such that saving the world from a drug-based virus differs from saving the world from, uh, the extinction of the human race via mobile phone simcards), the film seems to slide backwards from the admittedly lofty heights of the first film. Moore is a fun villainness, but her plan, and indeed her execution of it is strangely muted-for the richest woman in the world, Moore's entire ary seems to be a few dozen mooks, one guy with a metal arm and two robot dogs-meanwhile, Harry Hart seems to float, as the messy plot demands, between strange butterfly based delusions, caused by Samuel L Jackson's bullet from the previous film, and hyper competency, even seeing a major revelation coming before any other member of the cast, whilst the American additions are either put on ice relatively quickly, or left to tag along with our two heroes.


By far the biggest issue with the film is how tonally inconsistent it remains around its main plotline-since the Golden Circle's plan focuses around the legalisation of drugs, it would be easy for this film to make an overly anti-drugs message, and indeed at points, as the effect of Golden Circle's plan takes hold, it overtly swings into that message, as Poppy merrily orders people minced up and made up into hamburgers, threatens Elton John with drug related death, and has her robot dogs chase down and tear one of her minions in half.

Yet, as with Charlize Theron's cybercriminal in The Fate of the Furious, there are also points at which you not only find them a lot more fun than the majority of the laddish blokey cast, but actually agree with them-Poppy notes that sugar, alcohol, and nicotine are, after all, not only legal despite killing far more people a year than illegal drugs, but traded on stock-exchanges and vastly profitable. Were this a more nuaced film, one could easily see Poppy as a well-intentioned extremist, but in the Kingsman world, nuance and subtletity are of short supply.

This, after all is a film in which a feather-clad Elton John beats three people up with a piano, then assists Colin Firth in duo-dispatching a robotic dog with a bowling ball to the strains of Rocket Man. The violence, whilst stylised, with slo-mo a plenty, is barely above the Joel Schumacher Batman and Robin Biff! Pow! school, with donut crushings, fork impalings, and the aformentioned Elton John kung-fu fightings. For a sequel to a film, and indeed a creator that reveled in bloody action and a brutal realism, Golden Circle's action is comic book in the worst way imaginable, and what with its increasing lack of touch with reality, it frankly seems like a step back in almost every respect.

It's this that typifies why Golden Circle is a complete mess-the first film, for all its self-indugence and Bond-aping, knew exactly what it needed and wanted to do, and did it with a wicked grin and a slick approach. The Golden Circle meanders between setpieces, only occasionally stopping to crack wise, and for much of its overly long watch time, you frankly wonder what the film is trying to say-what it eventually says is this: Drugs are Bad, I guess? This movie is bad, I guess?

Rating: Neutral.