Review of Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) by Leon B — 16 Feb 2018

Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

(2017).

Plot:

"Kingsman: The Secret Service" introduced the world to Kingsman - an independent, international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion, whose ultimate goal is to keep the world safe. In 'Kingsman: The Golden Circle', our heroes face a new challenge. When their headquarters are destroyed and the world is held hostage, their journey leads them to the discovery of an allied spy organisation 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 organisations 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.

Review:

Being a fan of the first movie, I was really looking forward to seeing how Eggsy (Taron Egerton) had progressed as an agent but now that I've seen the movie, it just felt the same as the original Kingsman. Don't get me wrong, there are some great action scenes, and the some of the new characters were a great addition to the franchise but the concept seemed to follow the same guidelines as the first one, and a lot of the action scenes were really far fetched. The director also killed off all of the interesting characters, and I missed the Eggsy's "bad boy" image, which was what made the original movie so great. Anyway, in this movie Eggsy is forced to takedown the most powerful woman in the world, Poppy (Julianne Moore), after one of her agents, who went to the same training school as Eggsy, threatens to kill him. Poppy then users all of her powers to destroy the Kingsman agency, so Eggsy joins forces with his old agency pal, Merlin (Mark Strong) to revenge his fallen comrades, while he's building a new life with his girlfriend Princess Tilde (Hanna Alstrom). All of the clues track them to another agency in Kentucky, called the Statesman, and while they are using there resources to track down Poppy, they come across there old agency pal Harry Hart (Colin Firth), who was saved by the Statesman when he got shot in the eye. Poppy, who gained her wealth from selling drugs around the world, is fed up with being in hiding in the middle of nowhere, so she puts a killer drug into her drugs and threatens the president that she will kill everyone if he doesn't legalise her drugs. Confusing but pretty straight forward! Although the president doesn't care if all of the criminals die or not, the agency are out to save the world, so they hunt for the antidote, which will also save Eggsy's girlfriend who has taken Poppy's lethal drug. I liked the new characters from the Statesman agency, especially Tequila (Channing Tatum) and Whiskey (Pedro Pascal), and Champ was a great choice for the head of there agency but I don't think that we have seen the most from that agency yet. I was impressed with the attention to detail, and some of the gadgets, like the suitcase and the umbrella, were great but the character building wasn't that great because there was way to much going on. None of the new characters had a back story and the new agency seemed to pop out of nowhere. With that aside, it's quite an entertaining film and it's non-stop from the beginning to end but I still prefer the first movie for it's originality and wit. Watchable!

Round-Up:

This movie was directed by Matthew Vaughn, 46, who also brought you Layer Cake in 2004, Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class and the original Kingsman. He also produced Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Mean Machine, Harry Brown, The Debt, Fantastic Four and Eddie The Eagle, so he's had quite an impressive career to date. It's always hard to make a sequel to a successful movie, so I can understand the pressure that he was under to make this film, which is why he decided to introduce an American agency. Personally I liked the fact that the first movie was based in England, because the whole focus was on Eggsy, who was trying to become a well spoken person, coming from a bad boy background. Now that he has found his feet, it seemed more like a old school Bond film but the director tried to stay true to the characters by bringing back Harry Hart, who was pretty distant through the whole film. Elton John made me laugh throughout the movie and Julianne Moore was perfect as the villain but I still was expecting more from this sequel.

Budget: $104million.

Worldwide Gross: $410million.

Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy.

Cast: Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry, Elton John, Bruce Greenwood, Emily Watson, Pedro Pascal, Edward Holcroft, Hanna Alstrom, Thomas Turgoose, Keith Allen, Michael Gambon and Sophie Cookson. 6/10.