Formula: Kingsman: The Secret Service + more
I'm not sure what to do with the assessment
"it's good if you can just turn your brain off". In one respect, I
get it. Movies work on two levels: art and entertainment. Great movies can be
both. A lot of movies aren't trying to be artistic in any traditional sense
though. They just want to entertain. Because of that, they are shielded from
critical assessment. In another respect, that's a cop out. It's the same logic
as a "guilty pleasure", which I reject. You should always be able to
point out what you like about a movie or what works about it. If a movie can't
pass that basic test, then what's the point? I run into this problem a lot.
Films like Power Rangers or Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 I come
away from not impressed and my Reaction ends up pretty negative. Then, when I
tell people that, the response I get makes me feel like a self-serious downer.
I swear, I love dumb movies. I just need the charms of them to outweigh the
shaggier elements.
That brings me to Kingsman: The Golden Circle,
the sequel to 2014's Kingsman: The Secret Service. I quite enjoyed that
first movie for its commitment to utter excess and its keen awareness that it
was a 13 year-old's fever dream version of James Bond. I don't think the movie
was trying to say anything other than "this would be fun", and I
respected it for that. Kingsman 2 (I'm not writing The Golden Circle
every time), picks up a while after the first film. Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is a
full agent now, every bit as effective as his mentor, Harry (Colin Firth), was.
After a sneak attack by a drug kingpin (Julianne Moore) who has a fondness for
50's nostalgia, the Kingsmen are decimated, so Eggsy and Merlin (Mark Strong)
must employ the help of their stateside counterpart, the Statesmen. The Statesmen
are filled with plenty of cowboy stereotypes and played by Jeff Bridges,
Channing Tatum, and Halle Berry. The Statesmen and remaining Kingsmen have to
work together to take down Julianne Moore and her secret organization: The
Golden Circle. Oh, and since every bit of advertising has spoiled it, I should
mention that Colin Firth is back. Yay!...?
Kingsman 2 is
a sequel in the TMNT: Out of the Shadows vein. It's designed for fans of
the first movie and no one else. And, the bigger a fan of the first you are,
the better. It employs the standard sequel mentality of "escalate and
amplify". There's more of everything in the movie. Bigger action. More
characters. More complicated explanations. Archer villains. Cruder humor. I
loved all the stuff about the Statesman, if nothing else, because they are
bourbon distillers based out of Kentucky, and I'm from Kentucky and love
bourbon. They aren't all that inventive though, just a cowboy version of all
the same ideas behind the Kingsman. It's like getting a new version of a video
game with more characters but no changes to the gameplay*. I could be bothered
by the oversimplification of the Statesman, that's the way this series
operates: broad generalizations. All Brits are stuffy. All Americans are
cowboys. I'm sure an Australian group would all look like Crocodile Dundee.
Anything less would almost be a disappointment.
*For fans of Super Smash Brothers. Kingsman is to
Statesman as Marth is to Roy. Not inspired, but technically new.
The movie is very unforgiving if you don't have a
good memory of the first movie. It is filled with callbacks. As someone who
only somewhat remembers the first movie, that got old quickly. I like that they
are trying to reward fans. They do it just a little too much though, and it starts
to come off as isolating, like it's saying, "oh, this film isn't for you.
It's for real fans". Another thing about callbacks is that they work best
when the unfamiliar don't realize it's happening. If the movie is pausing to
say, "Hey, remember this?" then I can't call it a good call-back. A
good example is that this film recreates the most iconic scene from the first
movie and has some fun with shaking it up. It works even if you forgot or
didn't know about the original scene, but there are enough added details to
make it even better if you recognize them.
I take the good with the bad in a movie like this. I
enjoy how ridiculously over the top everything is. Julianne Moore is a bad
villain just like Samuel L Jackson was. He was a man with a lisp and loved to
talk and was a crime boss who hated the sight of blood. She is a ruthless drug
kingpin who doesn't like drugs or swearing. They don't fit the bold mold at
all. The action is so absurd that I'm happy to go along with it. Going back to
the video game comparison, it's like playing a level that you've already
mastered just for the fun of it. There are no stakes but it's still fun to go
through those motions. But, I have the same issues with this as with the first.
Some of the sex humor is dirty without being clever and the violence is a bit
more over the top than I care for.
I am lower on this movie than the first. There's a
lot of small things that annoy me that all build up. Bringing back Colin Firth
is inexcusable fan service. One thing that made the first movie interesting is
that it was willing to kill off the stand-out character like that. Bringing him
back and in such a convoluted way undoes a lot of the goodwill I had for the
series. It also struck me as a huge waste to off Sophie Cookson so casually.
Other characters get big sendoffs. She gets "oh no, a missile". That
didn't sit well with me. Given that, the way that Halle Berry takes the back
seat for most of the movie, and the mission Eggsy goes on at a music festival,
the film has some gender issues . I forgave the first film a lot more because
Cookson had a prominent role and Sofia Boutella got to be the ultimate badass.
Moore as a benign supervillain didn't make up for that as much. There's also a
cameo that overstays its welcome. It's like Matthew Vaughn was so happy he got
this person to appear in the film, that he kept writing more scenes with him
and didn't factor in the law of diminishing returns.
Oh, and the less I say about the toothless drug
commentary in this film, the better. It felt really unneeded. It's not more
absurd than anything else in the movie, especially the U.S. President's
response to it all. It's just more than the plot really needed.
Everyone in the cast, new and old, knows exactly
what is expected from their characters. Taron Egerton embodies the new face of
an old way of thinking. He fits in the suit perfectly while also being a bit of
a renegade when compared to the older generation. Collin Firth and Mark Strong
represent that old guard just as well this time around. The Statesman casting
is pretty perfect. Jeff Bridges is the obvious pick for the elder Statesman.
Channing Tatum seems right as one of the younger agents, especially since he
can just use that Logan Lucky accent* (I know, it's a little different).
Pedro Pascal is even having a lot of fun doing his best Burt Reynolds
impression. Halle Berry is frustratingly underused but fine when she shows up.
Julianne Moore is delightfully over-the-top. Anything more subtle would've been
somehow less authentic.
*Btw, this is the second Channing Tatum movie in a
row that prominently features the song "Take Me Home, Country Roads".
That's probably a coincidence, but it's specific enough to be worth noting. If
he suddenly gets cast in a John Denver biopic, I'll know that something's up.
I wasn't crazy about Kingsman 2. I did like
it, only slightly less than the first movie. It has that same half a grade
letter grade drop that's assumed for any sequel. That ends up being the difference between enjoying the first movie a lot and simply enjoying this one.
It doubles down on everything, which is effective in some cases and too much in
others. I can only recommend this to people who liked the first movie. Even
then, if you were only tepid about that one, there's nothing to change your
mind this time. Matthew Vaughn knows what he's about. So yeah, this movie is
good is you can just turn your brain off. If you leave your brain on, it's
still fun but pretty flawed.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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