A Brits-Yanks matchup
Spy-caper sequel ‘Kingsman: The Golden Circle’ offers more of the same action
The most remarkable thing about “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” — perhaps the only remarkable thing about it — is that it’s the latest of several pictures to feature an unexpected performance of “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
The evergreen popularity of John Denver’s music is a phenomenon that requires no explanation. Still, frequent moviegoers may have been surprised to hear his famous West Virginia anthem pop up as often as it has in recent months, in films as different as “Logan Lucky,” which is set mainly in that Appalachian state, and “Alien: Covenant,” which, uh, isn’t.
For its part, “Kingsman: The Golden Circle,” a flashy, silly, over-extended followup to the hit 2014 spy caper “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” spends its time chasing its characters from London to Kentucky to Glastonbury, England, to the Italian Alps. West Virginia may not be on their busy itinerary, but that hardly matters. Denver’s song serves its purpose, as a stirring signifier of the downhome Americana to which this globe-trotting entertainment occasionally tips its hat, in calculated contrast to the stiff, impeccably tailored Britishness of the main cast.
Most of that cast has reenlisted for duty, even if it means bending the movie’s fairly lax laws of mortality. The appealing Taron Egerton is back as Gary “Eggsy” Unwin, a handsome rough who spent the first film auditioning for the U.K.’s elite Kingsman spy agency, and so is Mark Strong as Merlin, the organization’s chrome-domed computer genius. And in light of the movie’s indiscreet marketing materials, it’s no spoiler to note that Eggsy’s presumed-dead mentor, Harry Hart, has miraculously survived his gunshot wound to the face and recovered just in time to give Colin Firth the top billing he deserves.
Also back for more is the English writer-director Matthew Vaughn, whose movies reliably showcase a high level of visual craft and stylistic pizzazz, whether they deserve it (“X-Men: First Class,” “Layer Cake”) or not (“Kick-Ass”). With “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” Vaughn and his cowriter, Jane Goldman, translated Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons’ comic-book series into a brutally irreverent James Bond pastiche. It was fun watching Eggsy ascend to the Kingsman ranks, beating out posher, Oxfordeducated competition in the process, even if it meant enduring a few risible setpieces involving a church massacre and an orgy of exploding heads.
Despite its similarly frenzied cloak-and-dagger-on-crack shenanigans, including a ski-retreat escapade that all but bashes a DVD of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” over the viewer’s head, “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” clearly means to be a less anarchic, more emotionally attuned experience than its predecessor.
At 141 minutes, it is also an unconscionably longer one; it pulls off the impressive feat of feeling both hyperactive and lazy. This is hardly the first time a major Hollywood franchise has succumbed to narrative flabbiness or invested in grand, elaborate world building with the kind of devotion that far outstrips the viewer’s interest.
The hook here is a transatlantic matchup between the Savile Row suits of Kingsman and the cowboy hats of Statesman, an equivalent U.S. covert organization housed within the walls of an enormous Kentucky whiskey distillery. On hand to show Eggsy and Merlin some Southern hospitality is Jeff Bridges as Statesman’s friendly leader, Champagne, while Channing Tatum, as the gruff Agent Tequila, brings along some mild cross-cultural tension and a few dance moves left over from “Magic Mike.” Halle Berry turns up as a shy, bespectacled tech expert called Agent Ginger Ale, who at one point notes to a roomful of white men that she’d really like to do some field work for a change. Presumably the next sequel will give her the chance.
Until then, we’re stuck watching the Kingsman gents join forces with Statesman’s Agent Whiskey (Pedro Pascal), a cowboy who wields a mean lasso — as in, the lasso is made out of sharp electrified rope and can slice your body in half. That kind of murderous innovation is central to the ostensible appeal of these movies (well, that and more innocent pleasures like listening to Firth utter words like “lepidopterist”). More than once, an unlucky henchman gets shoved into a giant meat mixer; the Coen brothers in their “Fargo” prime might have been able to get away with a gag like that, but Vaughn doesn’t have the wit or the finesse to pull it off.
The woman operating the meat mixer is Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore), a smiling drug lord with a psychotic chuckle and a nightmarish taste for yellow gingham. Poppy exports heroin and other narcotics from a Cambodian jungle compound that she has transformed into a retro American kitsch playground, complete with old-style diner and a bowling alley. Admittedly, your nearest Johnny Rockets probably doesn’t come equipped with robot attack dogs, just as your local theater probably doesn’t feature a captive Elton John, playing himself in an amusing cameo that would have been even more amusing at a fraction of the length.
That lack of discipline accounts for the severe tonal whiplash that “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” repeatedly induces as it grinds on and on. There are sweet moments of character interplay — Firth, Strong and Egerton make a fine team — and it’s nice to see Eggsy’s Swedish princess fiancée (Hanna Alström) serving as more than the butt of a cheap sexual joke this time around.
But these moments rest uneasily alongside the movie’s nasty, smirking asides, to say nothing of the bizarrely straight-faced earnestness of the main plot. It involves a corrupt White House, images of mass incarceration and a dastardly scheme to end the war on drugs by wiping out anyone who’s ever abused or even used one of Poppy’s illegal substances — all of which allows the movie to cop an indignant, faux-progressive attitude.
“Those victims are human beings!” one character protests loudly. Well, yes, but so are the hamburgers.