British filmmaker Matthew Vaughn continues to show his love for Roger Moore camp era James Bond films with his comic interpretation of writer Mark Millar's The Secret Service in his sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle. The cartoonish follow-up oozes bright colours and plenty of style with more international globetrotting super-villainy.
Taron Egerton returns as Eggsy, now a fully-fledged secret agent, out to save the world from another international threat headed by an American megalomaniac entrepreneur–this time played by a sickly sweet Julianne Moore. A revived Colin Firth as Harry also returns, in the most convoluted of ways, giving his character a nice, if unexpected and lengthy, arc, fuelling the film's ridiculously over-the-top plot. An upbeat Mark Strong gets a lot more to do serving as the film's heart.
Essentially destroyed, the Kingsman organization must enlist the help of their American counterpart, the Statesman. Enter Channing Tatum, with his fun Southern charm, but he is deceptive, doing very little and barely featuring in the film or its story. He shows up for a stylish introduction only to obtrusively disappear for most of the film's lengthy running time while another character takes his place for no logical reason.
Both newcomers, Jeff Bridges and Halle Berry, are amusing as Statesman cohorts but get almost nothing to do except stand around and be famous, appearing throughout. However, Pedro Pascal is pitch-perfect as an American cowboy-spy hybrid and their best agent, taking over for Tatum. Moore, as the main villain, clearly had a lot of fun playing the Martha Stewart of international drug crime lords with a sinister housewife persona. Her strangely energetic manner of delivering horrific orders is truly amusing.
Surprisingly, many minor characters from the first film return to play major roles, including Hanna Alström and Edward Holcroft as Eggsy's Swedish princess girlfriend and former rival. Even Elton John has a surprisingly large, very comedic supporting role as himself after being referenced the first time around. Vaughn seems to revel in building out the Kingsman world while destroying so many of its elements on screen.
Vaughn and co-writer Jane Goldman manage to pay off so many points of the Kingsman mythology while ignoring new factors, including how easily these independent agencies can be compromised and their massive size and scope, despite employing so few agents. Halfway through, they also attempt satirical plotlines involving drug legalization and the abuse of presidential powers, which largely fail to impress.
Vaughn and Millar's brand of heightened comic violence remains stylish and thoughtful enough to be fun when executed by such talented actors. At 141 minutes, The Golden Circle is just too much movie to be a briskly entertaining endeavour like the first, with so many characters and villains who don't do much of anything. However, Vaughn, as a filmmaker, is so assured and confident in what he's doing that everything almost seems willed to work together. It manages to be simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating, somehow.
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