The spy who lost me
Elton John delights in a cameo and Colin Firth is as charming as ever — but this sequel to Matthew Vaughn’s ultra-violent Bond spoof fails to live up to the glorious original KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE Cert 15, 141 mins
SO LONG, suckers! Matthew Vaughn’s action spy sequel spoofs the kind of cartoon baddies who plot to rule the world. But it’s Vaughn himself who seems to have joined the dark side. His (so very long) offering treats audience members as if they were gormless, sniggering teens.
In case you’re wondering, I adored the first film. For those who missed it, Kingsman: The Secret Service is about sweet-natured young oik Eggsy (Taron Egerton), who gets inducted by mercurial gent Harry Hart (Colin Firth) into a spy ring.
Eggsy and his plucky fellow recruit Roxy discover that being a gentleman has nothing to do with accents or gender. Assaulting elitism at every turn, they ultimately wipe out the one per cent, including the Queen of England. It’s not every day the Queen gets her head blown off. Kingsman dared to be different, even managing, at its most violent, to deconstruct blood-lust. And it worshipped every last, squiggly guitar bit in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird. Yep, there was a lot to love.
Given that both films are written by Vaughn and Jane Goldman it’s hard to understand why the follow-up is cruel, spineless, virtually laughterfree and, above all, dull. Even putting the plot to paper makes my head ache. Ah, well.
Having laced endless batches of drugs with a lethal component in order to force the American President to end the war on drugs, Americana-loving, Cambodia-based cartel boss Poppy ( Julianne Moore, underused) orchestrates an attack on Kingsman HQ with the help of
Eggsy’s dastardly old enemy Charlie (Edward Holcroft).
Luckily, Eggsy discovers that England has a special relationship with the US. He and Merlin (Mark Strong) head to a distillery in Kentucky where fellow spies Tequila (Channing Tatum) and Ginger Ale (Halle Berry) outline Eggsy’s new mission, which involves him going back to England. Before coming back to Kentucky… Arrgh! Never underestimate the pain caused by a convoluted synopsis.
Anyway, during the trip to England things turn nasty. Charlie has a British girlfriend, Clara (Poppy Delevingne), who is a Tinder junkie. Eggsy, exploiting this weakness, visits the Glastonbury festival and plants a tracker in Clara’s vagina. That’s right. She’s guilty of liking casual sex and her punishment is swift: Eggsy, literally, sticks it to her.
And then, metaphorically, he sticks it to her again. In a later scene, one so gratuitously unpleasant it makes you rub your ears in disbelief, he lets Charlie know that Clara was up for it in Glasto. Just to be clear: Clara is too flaky to be a threat to humanity yet our hero, basically, puts a target on her back. Which makes it actively spooky that the film wants to position him as moral.
Some might point to Eggsy’s love for Princess Tilde (the principled Swedish gal he met in the first film) as proof that he’s a New Man. He resists having penetrative sex with Clara because he wants to be true to his woman. Who, wait for it, is desperate for a white wedding and sulks when Eggsy doesn’t propose on cue. What decade are we in, again?
Ironically, one of the few interesting things about Tilde is her attitude to
buggery. In a scene from the original that many found crass and sexist she offered her un-lubed bum to Eggsy as a reward for saving the world.
This time round she enthusiastically implies she’s ready to do it once more. It’s abundantly clear that she enjoys anal sex (possibly more than Eggsy). She’s