Kingsman: The Golden Circle: Quick Movie Review [Minor Spoilers]

Note: “Minor Spoilers” refers to information revealed in trailers, basic plot points and other publicly available knowledge to be used as talking points. Continue reading at your own risk.

Well… all those Men in Black 2 comparisons were right weren’t they?

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is the sequel to Kingsman, the 2014 surprise “Kingsman”, the story of a Brit Punk joining the secret spy service of the same name and trying to save the world while learning to be a gentlemanly sir. If you’ve seen the first Kingsman, then you know two things: 1, it was awesome, 2, our main character, Eggsy, had completed his training and is now a full fledged Kingsman agent, meaning his character basically has nowhere to go.

That’s basically the core problem with Kingsman 2: it’s the first Kingsman done over again, with almost none of the stuff that made it cohesive and unique. Our plot has 90% of the re-established Kingsman service blown to pieces by a new villain (Julianne Moore) and Eggsy and the remaining Kingsman agents are forced to call upon The Statesmen, the US version of the Kingsman outfit with a cowboy/wild west theme.

And honestly, all interest or investment in the film past the first 10 - 15 minutes depends on how funny you find the jokes, (which there are some good ones) and how impressive you find the action scenes (of which there are some really good ones), but the energy of the whole thing is just deflated. Eggsy is still a good character, but his arc is complete and spends most of the film just hopping from one action sequence to the next without much forethought for purpose. The other big names gathered for this film (Halle Berry, Channing Tatum, etc) perform well, but have no purpose to be in the film other than “hey look we got Halle Berry and Channing Tatum”.

So we have a movie where the characters have nothing to do, except go to the next action scene and hope for the best. Does it work at all? Well, sure, much like it’s predecessor, Kingsman 2 knows its way around a good action scene, they’re well choreographed and the few scenes involving the Statesmen make good use out of their lassos and revolvers. Comparing it to the original however, there isn’t anything close to top the Free Bird brawl or the exploding heads from the first Kingsman. That may be a case of over expectating, but the fact that as I’m sitting here and can only remember 1 or 2 decent shots from a fight scene whereas the Free Bird fight will be burned into my retinas for another 10 years, it’s a bit of a disappointment.  

Did I enjoy Kingsman 2? Yes, but only for a handful of good jokes and some good action scenes. The rest of the film is marred by a lack of purpose, forced explanations and scattered plot holes. It certainly could have been better.

5/10