Review of Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) by Nbfc — 09 Jan 2018

Starts off great with a fantastic car chase that involves Eggsy (Egerton) fighting a Winter Solider-ized Charlie Hesketh (the explanation for how he survived the first movie admittedly makes no sense) soundtracked to Let’s Go Crazy by Prince. But sadly, the rest of the sequel to Matthew Vaughn's surprise R-rated action hit never hits the same high note.

On the whole, The Golden Circle is a typical average sequel. There are also some fun action and humor-filled banter with Eggsy and an eye-patched Galahad (resurrected through the power of deus ex machina) at the end too.

There are also plenty of damn funny moments too, including one involving a GPS tracker that literally had everybody in the audience rolling on the floor.

Even though this sequel is far from devoid of entertainment value, it disappointingly suffers from typical sequelitis problems and it is all rooted in the script, which essentially boils down to a bloated re-tread of the first movie.

The movie suffers from severe pacing issues due to too many uninteresting plot threads (Ex. Eggsy's relationship trouble) and ultimately pointless characters.

Even the Statesman, which were a centerpiece in the film’s marketing, end up being completely superfluous to the plot. Channing Tatum fans will be severely disappointed because he only has a total of 10 minutes of total screen time before being unceremoniously removed from the plot. Even Halle Berry and Jeff Bridges are barely in the movie and thus do not make much of an impression.

The only Statesman to receive any significant screen-time is Pedro Pascal, who plays Jack Daniels (aka. the one with the whip). Now I really like Pascal, especially on Narcos, and he does a good job with the role and has a good chemistry with main trio of Kingsman. But as with the case with most things with this movie, Jack Daniels doesn’t really add much to the narrative and mostly exists to squeeze in more action sequences.

Probably the biggest weakness of this movie is surprisingly it’s main villain. Despite a solid introduction (you will not look at a hamburger the same way again), the 50’s obsessed drug lord Poppy Adams (Moore) comes off as more of an annoyance to our heroes than an actual threat. She lacks that seamless balance of odd humor and sincere menace that Samuel L. Jackson brought in the first one. Her obsession with the 50’s is never given a satisfying explanation outside of “she’s crazy” and her scheme is simply idiotic.

Moore’s overly ernest dialogue delivery and just the fact that most of the jokes written for her are lame contribute to her character getting annoying and old VERY fast.