Review: Kingsman The Golden Circle
Kingsman: The Golden Circle makes no bones about its intentions to be a bigger, louder, more frenetic, and even more absurd sequel to the giddy delight that was Kingsman: The Secret Service. Its opening sequence - a nighttime car chase through the streets of London featuring closed-quarters combat, prosthetic limbs, bladed shoes, and more Tokyo drift than in the Fast and Furious installment of the same name - is emblematic of the film's go-for-broke, no-holds-barred, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach and how you react to this aural and visual assault will determine your enjoyment of the rest of the film. Either you'll find it pointlessly preposterous overkill or you'll be adrenalised by director Matthew Vaughn's unabashed pleasure in wowing his viewers.
The story, secondary as it is, takes place soon after the events of the first film. Working-class boy Eggsy (Taron Egerton) has settled into his role as Bond Jr. for spy organisation Kingsman and as boyfriend to Tilde (Hanna Alström), the Swedish princess he rescued at the end of the previous film, though he still deeply misses mentor and father figure Harry Hart (Colin Firth), who took a bullet to the head. Naturally, trouble comes knocking in the form of Charlie (Edward Holcroft), a former Kingsman trainee who literally lost his head in the previous film's finale of exploding heads but who is very much alive and sporting a bionic arm (Charlie will not be the only presumed-dead character resurrected for the sequel). Charlie has a new boss, Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore), unacknowledged head of the world's largest drug cartel, who immediately shows off her deadly side by launching geo-targeted missiles which wipe out all members of the Kingsman save for Eggsy (who was meeting Tilde's parents at their palace) and Mark Strong's Merlin, who was too lowly to have his address included in the hacked database of super agents.
The situation leads the two survivors to Kentucky, where they discover the existence of Statesman, Kingsman's American counterpart, who use a whisky distillery as their cover. There we're introduced to Statesman head Champagne (Jeff Bridges), bad boy Tequila (Channing Tatum), tech support Ginger Ale (Halle Berry), and the lasso-brandishing Whiskey (Pedro Pascal). The Kingsmen and Statesmen must work together to save the world from Poppy, who has laced all of her drugs with a toxin that causes its users to develop a blue rash, which is a prelude to the mania, paralysis and horrible death to come. Poppy offers to release the antidote to the President of the United States (Bruce Greenwood) provided he legalise drugs.
Perhaps the best thing about The Golden Circle is the creation of Poppy herself, who is essentially a perky Fifties housewife as ruthless sociopath. Moore is never less than chirpy, but she deploys that cheerfulness to chilling effect. Poppy has no compunction throwing disloyal henchmen into a meat grinder and serving them as hamburger meat to inductees, or kidnapping Elton John (yes, the Elton John, whom Vaughn manages to exploit as even more of a visual gag) to function as her own in-house entertainer. Even better is her recreating a 50's-era town in the jungles of Cambodia, which allows Vaughn to stage scenes in gleaming diners, beauty salons and bowling alleys that are populated with human and robotic henchmen as well as Poppy's ever-faithful killer robot dogs, Bennie and Jet. Whatever one thinks of the bloat that does creep into the film, Poppy and Poppy Land are worth the the price of admission.
One definitely get one's money's worth with The Golden Circle for Vaughn's inexhaustible bag of tricks. In addition to the whiz-bang car chase that opens the film, there's an action sequence on the Italian mountains that's a manic nod to both On Her Majesty's Secret Service as well as Spectre, a barroom brawl featuring Whiskey's prowess with a lasso, and the finale that is almost seizure-inducing in its fervid flamboyance.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Written by: Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn; based on the comic book by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons
Starring: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Channing Tatum, Mark Strong, Halle Berry, Jeff Bridges, Pedro Pascal, Michael Gambon, Elton John, Sophie Cookson, Edward Holcroft, Poppy Delevingne, Hanna Alström, Bruce Greenwood, Emily Watson
