Mathew Vaughn is a great film maker. By bringing us Kickass, Kingsman: The Secret Service, X-Men:
First Class and many other films, he has solidified himself as a
consistently good writer and director. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I watch
Kingsman: The Golden Circle and
discover that it suffers from the all too familiar case of what I like to call ‘sequel
syndrome’. Trying to recreate the same essence of crazy action and hilarious
writing was always going to be difficult in respect to following up The Secret Service as it’s hard to catch
lightning in a bottle twice. Where there are remnants of decent action set pieces,
great acting with the odd funny lines here and there, they can’t save the film
from being a sequel with very few original ideas.
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| Does this all feel a little familiar to you? |
After saving the world, Eggsy has earned the codename
Galahad and is now a fully-fledged member of the Kingsman agency. The film
opens with an incredibly fast paced chase scene as Charlie, a disgraced former Kingsman
candidate, tries to steal top secret information from Eggsy as well as kill him
for revenge after the events of the previous film. As it turns out, Kingsman
have been tracking his whereabouts and uncover he has ties to a shady organisation
going by the name of “The Golden Circle”. This organisation is the largest drug
ring in the world and the woman who controls it, Poppy, is certifiably insane
to say the least. After launching multiple missile strikes on the Kingsman,
Merlin and Galahad are the only members left in the organisation and must find
the “Statesman”, their American counterpart. It is only then that they discover
Harry Hart is now not dead, so they must bring him back to the world of action
and espionage to save the world from the evil Golden Circle.
The first thing I need to address is the way this film was
marketed. I know Mathew Vaughn was not happy with including Colin Firth’s Harry
Hart in the trailers. Stating that the whole including of his survival in the
trailers was “stupidity”, he goes on to say, “I begged the studio not to reveal
it.” I whole heartedly agree with Vaughn and many others on this front as we
are given so many trailers these days that spoil massive plot points in the
movies. Terminator: Genysis spoiled
that John Connor had somehow been turned into a terminator. Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice spoiled
that Doomsday would be making an appearance meaning that the film wouldn’t
actually be about Batman fighting Superman. Another bone I must pick with the
marketing is why how they’ve advertised the actors on posters and in trailers.
Channing Tatum’s Agent Tequila features heavily in the trailers but has less than,
what seems, 5 minutes screen time whereas Pedro Pascal, best known as Oberyn on
Game of Thrones and Peña in Narcos, as Agent Whiskey is not given a
place on the poster but has many appearances in the trailer. It is clear that
the studio could only get Tatum for a set amount of time and probably had to
reshoot with Pascal instead.
In saying what I thought about the marketing setting up the
film to be a poor depiction to what we thought might transpire, it brings me on
perfectly into what I liked about this film. Firstly, it is Pascal’s
performance that redeems a lot of what goes wrong in this film. Any scene he is
in, he completely owns with great delivery of his lines with some fantastic
fight choreography. Secondly, Taron Edgerton is proving to be a very competent actor.
The first film solidified his position as a real up and coming star, by
performing alongside British acting heavyweight Colin Firth, and in the sequel
to that film, he holds his own very well. There are also some great laughs in
this film. Contrasting American and British behaviours and colloquialisms always
proves to be funny, and this is most present in the comparing of the gadgets each
organisation owns. The fight scenes are always entertaining but I’ll illustrate
later why I feel they don’t compel me to talk about them a great deal. Finally,
and I can’t put this off any longer, but I should say that the Elton John cameo
was at times rather funny. Except, and this is where I venture into talking
about the negatives of The Golden Circle,
it gets very old VERY QUICKLY.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, Elton John was asked to
appear in The Secret Service but said
that he didn’t want to. Now, after the surprise success of that film, he said
yes to appearing in its sequel. For a cameo appearance, as I state above, it is
funny at times but the constant reoccurring gag of Elton John doing Elton John
things, Elton John telling people to “Fuck the fuck off!”, Elton John looking
at the camera whilst air kicking a guy in the face... I could go on but I won’t.
It only gets worse with every appearance. This is but one thing I found really
dragged the film down. I’ll talk in detail about the other negative aspects of
the film, but I’ll briefly say that the pacing of the film was way off. Opening
with a high-octane car chase was a poor move and it doesn’t improve from there.
It begins to get rather predicable to say the least.
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| Literal dead man walking |
The overriding problem of Kingsman: The Golden Circle is that it lacks new, innovative and
creative ideas. Most notably, the survival of Harry. When key characters die
and then come back to life, it shatters the thought that our characters are in
danger. Much like in video games, the protagonist you might play as in an
action game cannot in a sense ‘die’ as you can simply respawn and try again. Kingsman: The Secret Service is a film
that forms new ideas of what a spy film is. They reference previous spy movies
to show how far the genre has come and to quote Eggsy, “This ain’t that type of
movie bruv.” What made the original so good was that it broke new ground on
what it meant to be a spy in the 21st century. By miraculously resurrecting
a man, who was shot in the head might I add, just because he was so well received
in the first film to bring back those fans, is nothing more than a cop out. The
bar fight scene is another example of this. The first-time round, it was a breath-taking
sequence as you had no idea Colin Firth could move that way and it was just
cathartic to watch a bunch of chavs getting smacked about. In this, yes, it’s
Whiskey that beats all the rednecks up but the fight is only instigated on the
fact that some guy doesn’t like that Harry only has one eye. Why is that enough
to warrant him to leave? The first one had purpose as the bunch of guys were
looking to beat Eggsy up and forced Galahad to leave, adding a sense of
paternal protection to the scene when he fights back. The new one just had no
weight behind it. Julianne Moore’s ‘Poppy’ creates another problem. She is
given nothing to do and where she clearly portrays madness in her dialogue and
actions, there is no sense of dominance or fear when it comes to her dastardly plan.
Where, like Richmond Valentine, there is real debate as to whether their
actions are justified. Where the culling to save the world from climate change
has its sides, the drug trade also makes points regarding these substances
being less addictive than alcohol and sugar. Both claims are refuted thanks to
the outcomes of these two films but Poppy’s Golden Circle is just not
threatening. Valentine had a complete private army, alternatively Poppy has a
few personal guards and 2 robotic dogs (yes I just said robotic dogs).
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| Nothing eccentric here I'm afraid |
This brings me to the final point I’ll make about the film.
Remember how the first movie ended? That scene panning down on Princess Tilde?
It was this moment that sparked mass debate about the way the entire movie
portrayed women. In the past, I have defended Vaughn’s decision to end this way
because it criticises the old ways in which Bond films used to end, with him
going off into the sunset to do all sorts of things with the girl he’d just
saved. I look back and I must admit that now this was not a criticism, this was
a scene that conformed to the sexist tropes of past spy films and completely objectifies
the ‘damsel in distress’ character. The
Golden Circle takes this idea so much further to the point where I genuinely
wanted to throw something at the screen. Eggsy and Whiskey must plant a tracker
on Charlie’s girlfriend so they can follow her and gain intel on The Golden
Circle’s whereabouts. However, we are shown that this tracker comes in the form
of a tiny condom. For it to work the condom must come into contact with a mucus
membrane. Eggsy rightly states that sticking it up her nose wouldn’t work so
Whiskey points out there are more mucus membranes, and I’ll leave you to decide
which one he means. Therefore, the two men decide to fight about which one is
going to plant the tracker inside her… I know I previously said that Kingsman is a new type of spy movie so I
hear some ask, “Doesn’t this prove that this really is a Kingsman film?” To that answer no. If the Kingsman films were new types of spy movies, they wouldn’t and
shouldn’t have to resort to objectifying the female body to carry the plot.
To conclude, I found this film rather mediocre. You may
notice that I compare it a lot to the first film rather than a on its own. I
have done this because it offers so little to be able to judge it by itself.
Having been blown away by The Secret
Service I was not looking for a sequel because it concluded with all its
stories developed and finished. The
Golden Circle left me feeling nothing but disappointment as this did not
further anyone’s story arc in a credible manner and did more to hurt this new
franchise than improve it. Are we going to get another Kingsman film, of course
we are because there is money to be made! Let’s pray that the inevitable sequel
is worthy to the original.
5.5/10
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