Kingsman: The Golden Circle

I like the first Kingsman, I like Matthew Vaughn, I like movies that aren't afraid to go their own way and have fun with an extremely violent scene in which Colin Firth dispatches a church full of religious fanatics. The director of this action flick hasn't given me any reason to doubt his abilities so far, so I was looking forward to the second installment, but alas, this time Vaughn stumbled. Or rather, it looks like he doesn't care where he steps. The Golden Circle is almost two and a half hours long, has about three action set-pieces (one great, one decent, and one pointless), but completely disappoints in its handling of the new characters. The Statesmen don't impress much, the main villain and her devious plan are quite a sad sight to behold, and it all lacks the lightness, wit and quirkiness of the first film. This one managed to be cool and engaging in every other scene. It's awful to see them trying to do the same thing this time around, and it rarely works. Otherwise, it's mostly talk, everyone is serious, and as the minutes go by it becomes more and more clear that this sequel doesn't really have much to offer. Just Vaughn's lucid action, a good Taron Egerton and an excellent Firth. You know that feeling when you have to make tea out of a used bag? That's it. It's still got some flavour, but it was better in every way last time. And if you had to make it a third time, you might want to give it a miss... (07/27/2018)

It slows the pace less and picks up the pace more to the highest revs and cadence of insane, amazing, terrifying, or just perfectly effective ideas, never stopping for a moment. The boundless adoration of the first part does not apply to me, but I enjoyed it tremendously; maybe that's why I can now build Kingsman: The Golden Circle right next to it. Taron Egerton has also matured as an actor and almost doesn't lag at all behind Mark Strong or even Colin Firth. Again, the oddity and disturbing madness of the villain's Bond-like plan bothers me. Several times I even thought it was rising to almost miraculous places before the blue haze painfully brought me back down to earth. (09/21/2017)

Excellent fun carrying on riding the wave of part 1, pushing it to greater extremes, which sometimes is a shame, but you will easily forgive the Kingsmans. Vaughn again delivers us imaginative action, this time with a robotic arm and a jump-rope (pardon, lasso), a genius car chase in the taxi at the beginning. Again he successfully created an original idea about a villain wanting to redeem the world (I not talking about Poppy here) and the president is really cool. The eyesore of the movie in the form of a Cambodian temple with a retro bistro makes for an interesting setting. In acting terms, it takes no chances. Sometimes I have the feeling that some movies were made especially for me, and the Kingsmans are certainly one of them. See you in Sweden. (09/20/2017)

If there was a bit more action and humor, then maybe this sequel could grow on me. But without it, it’s a classic lousy sequel that has an action-filled beginning, ending, but the two hours in between are just a boring stuffing that the movie could do without. The only upside are the actors who are enjoying these roles to the fullest. What’s more, Elton John’s probably not gonna forget this experience for the rest of his life. After I finished watching, I thought that if the movie was half an hour shorter and some of the scenes got a little more work, it could have been a perfect successor of the first one. For example, I like Mark Strong, but some of the moments were plain horrendous. I don’t want to spoil anything, but a certain scene was so upsetting that were I a professional movie critic I would have gotten up and left. But since I’m not a professional critic, I finished the movie. If you’re expecting a crazy story, you’ll be pleased. But know that there’s less action scenes than you’d expect. Even then, it’s pretty good. (09/24/2017)

In his first sequel, Vaughn had a unique opportunity to play with the "rules" and vices of the sequel, just as he had in the past with fairy-tale, comic, and bond rules. But instead of addressing them, he made fun of them and took advantage of them, so he is slightly defeated by "sequel illness". The result is a film suffering from all the maladies of the sequel, namely more of everything, bigger, longer, more grandiose, more populated, crazier, more excessive and ... And as a result less entertaining (not to be confused with not entertaining). Mainly because the concept did not level up, the length is unjustified, the joke with Elton is repeated until it becomes annoying, Julianne is excellent, but detached from all interaction with others. It is too excessive this time to work as an (almost) regular Bond movie (which the first movie managed to balance), the original characters do not develop at all, there are no emotions except for "Merlin´s singing" sequence and most of the new characters are caricatures without any hint of personality. Does that mean that Vaughn lost his driving force, his ideas and made a pointless average movie? No, it doesn´t. He's a way too good director to do that, and the cast which clearly enjoys it helps him a lot, but the movie is very close to the above-mentioned. (09/20/2017)