Kingsman: The Golden Circle Review

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is the sequel to Kingsman: The Secret Service and this time is about their spy organization being destroyed and how the surviving operatives have to team up with their American counterparts, the Statesman, to stop a common threat (thanks to 20th Century Fox for the advanced screening).

I’m going to start by saying I loved the original Kingsman. Just like everything Mathew Vaughn directs, it was well written, energetic, funny, and otherwise felt like a fresh take on the spy thriller genre. I was surprised to hear that he was going to direct the sequel because Vaughn normally never handles the sequels to his movies and has only made originals up to this point. However, bringing him back has only shown that he can’t make gold every time. I’m not saying this movie was flat out bad but that it came close.

Starting with the positives, the action is still really fun to watch. All the quick cuts, crazy weapons, and the music make each scene entertaining as hell. There’s one scene during the finale that might actually top the church scene from the first movie. The entire cast was also really good minus Julianne Moore who was a little too over the top as the villain (but I mean how can you hold a candle to Samuel L. Jackson). I thought watching the Kingsmen interact with the Statesmen was also really interesting. Seeing all the differences between the weapons and fashion styles just made me want to see what the other organizations are like in this universe. Like would the Japanese Kingsman be like high-tech spy Samurais or something? That would be pretty sick.

But in all seriousness, this movie did not live up to the original. Firstly, the plot was really thin and it felt like the writers wrote the movie as they filmed it like by just asking themselves “and then what happens?” over and over. Collin Firth was a wasted character here and honestly should have stayed dead. The reason as to why he’s back to life, I thought was kind of lazy and unnecessary. He didn’t really add anything to the main plot and his separate subplot had no effect on anything in the end.

I think they should’ve focused more on the Statesman operatives that were introduced. Channing Tatum is all over the posters for this movie but is in it for like 5 minutes. Jeff Bridges also did a great job, but was also barely used. The only redeeming new character was Pedro Pascal’s Whiskey, who really should’ve had more screen time and I think it would have been great to see him be Eggsy’s new mentor/partner at least for this movie. Then we could’ve gotten a deeper relationship that would’ve made the ending a lot more emotional. I’m trying not to spoil anything, but basically the ending adds some depth to Pascal’s character quickly and tries to pay it off in the next scene. That moment in the end would have been better earned through some more down time with him rather than Harry, who we learn nothing substantially new about.

I also think it would’ve been better for the story to have there be some drama between the two organizations as well. As it stands, the Statesmen were just there to give the remaining Kingsmen resources like planes and weapons. Vaughn literally plays the plot in the most basic way possible. The first scuffle with Channing Tatum really had me hoping for something more. The villain was hella weak too. Julianna Moore plays this drug kingpin and I felt like they gave her somewhat of an interesting personality, but she didn’t really do much after destroying the Kingsman HQs at the beginning. She felt less like a person and more like a stereotypical cartoon villain. She also doesn’t interact with anyone other than her henchmen until the very end, which is why Sam Jackson was a more fun villain in the first movie.

As I said before she was a little over the top, so it kind of took away from when the film tries to take itself seriously. Her main henchmen being robotic dogs was kind of lame too because in the first movie we had that lady with the sword legs. You could say that the dude with the robot arm was the replacement for her, but he was defeated pretty easily and didn’t really feel like a threat. The relationship between Eggsy and his girlfriend also was extremely forced and basically just a plot device.

The main problem, though, is that there really is no point to the plot. None of the main characters develop in any way, so it really feels like the movie is just running in place with them. In the first movie, Eggsy goes from street punk to gentleman spy. This movie basically continues that with no other real change in him. It felt like a self contained episode rather than a progression. It expanded the universe and unnecessarily killed off a lot of characters, but that doesn’t make up for everything else. The tone also isn’t as subdued and classy as its predecessor and feeds more into the insanity that the first one cleverly built up to, which was a little jarring at first.

Overall, I would say that this isn’t a bad movie by no means, but that it just really dropped off from the first one. It’s just fine. I had fun with it but was pretty disappointed by the end. By the way this is the first review where I'll start giving ratings out of 10.

The Verdict: 6.5/10