Kingsman: The Golden Circle
So, for a big studio brave enough to step outside of remakes and regurgitated content in an attempt to jump-start a new franchise, the original Kingsman (2014), and this sequel offer up a pretty surefire step-by-step method.It helps to start with an already established concept, in this case, the gadget-heavy British secret agent genre. Chances are strong that your audience already has a pretty solid understanding of what’s entailed, with always-cool agents, their lovers, and the supervillains they stop with the help of a bevy of cool, deadly gizmos. To that maybe add a twist or two — instead of an agent being to the manner born, how about if they were working class? — and punch up the violence to comic-book absurdity, to further differentiate it from its genre lineage. The result is this fledgling series that does away with the stuffiness of Ian
Fleming and dares to replace it with a truly salty sensibility — call it Bond without the baggage.
Of course, if you take away the gravity of Bond — something Sam Mendes has worked hard to restore over the past decade or so after a lull in the ongoing series — what you’re left with is pretty flimsy stuff. What Matthew Vaughn and writing partner Jane Goldman have replaced it with is an outrageous story that 007 and others of his ilk would most certainly mock. It might not hold up the way that original series has done — some two dozen films over better than five and a half decades — but it’s not the worst way to while away an evening.
We begin shortly after the first film left off. Eggsy (Taron Egerton), an established Kingsman, still mourning the loss of his mentor, Galahad (Colin Firth), and now living with Princess Tilde (Hanna Alstrom), the woman he memorably freed from a prison cell in the first film, is attacked by former Kingsman wash-out Charlie (Edward Holcroft), sporting a bionic arm and a nasty disposition. Dispatching him, at least for the time being, it’s revealed to Eggsy that Charlie has joined up with the madly malevolent Poppy (Julianne Moore), the self-proclaimed CEO of the “biggest drug cartel” in the world.
Much as Samuel L. Jackson’s ridiculous character in the first film, Poppy has a Grand Scheme, in this case to spike all of her illegal drugs with a slow-acting poison, and demand the U.S. president (Bruce Greenwood) make all drugs legal, thus ensuring her of an even larger international market share in order for her to release the antidote. With millions of people around the world poisoned — including some folks very near and dear to Eggsy’s heart — it would seem she would have perfect leverage, only, unbeknownst to her, our nameless president is actually entirely OK with the idea of all the world’s drug users dying horribly. (“I just won the war on drugs!” he proclaims).
As phase one of Poppy’s scheme, she also dispatches a series of rockets to destroy all known Kingsman locations, leaving only Eggsy and Merlin (Mark Strong) to hold down the fort. With nowhere else to go, they head out to Kentucky, of all places, to meet up with the Statesmen, the American cousin to their own independent intelligence gathering organization, who run a whiskey distillery in addition to dispatching jean-jacket-cowboy-hat-clad agents, such as Tequila (Channing Tatum), Ginger Ale (Halle Berry), and Whiskey (Pedro Pascal), to kick butt and rope the bad guys.
One thing you can say about Vaughn’s concoction (based largely on the comic book series by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons), he
doesn’t appear to hold anything back: Amid too-slick, CGI-enhanced action sequences, robust and exceedingly graphic bloody violence, robot attack dogs, and the unexpected appearance of a certain former rock star, he leaves almost nothing to chance. The film is bombastic and ridiculously breakneck, daring you to look away. Fortunately, for him, there is just (barely) enough humor and inspired lunacy to keep the contraption lurching forward, but at a brutish 2 hours 21 minutes, it still outstays its welcome by a good half hour.
It’s also about punched out of its story: The first film got to at least play a bit with the rough and tumble Eggsy’s class differences, but by now they are pretty much
smoothed over, and the ‘mad genius installing something that affects half the world’ narrative is getting to be like the evil Empire building Deathstars over and over again for rebellion target practice.
If there’s a third film — and if this one succeeds, you can certainly count on it — they might have to switch things up a smidge. Without the legacy or heft of the actual Bond franchise behind it, they will have to start looking elsewhere for inspiration. It might mean the screenwriters actually have to devise more of a plot, and not just jam the film with exotic violence, tailored suits, and high-tech watches, but I’m sure they can be properly recompensed for their trouble.