Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

"So you can take your cheap horse piss that you call
whisky, which, by the way, is spelled without an 'e' and
is nothing compared to a single malt scotch, and you can
go fuck yourself."

In 2014, Matthew Vaughn unleashed his bonkers spy adventure, Kingsman: The Secret Service, on the world. It was like James Bond had swallowed a handful of amphetamines, and gone on a mission. It was refreshing, and fun, and different. Last year (2017), Vaughn released Kingsman: The Golden Circle, and I, for quite a few reasons, was too busy to catch it in theaters. I was eager to revisit the franchise, however. When it dropped on HBO, I was ecstatic. I was excited to return to Vaughn's absurd world of impeccably dressed secret spy organizations. And so I sat down to watch it last night.

Summary:

The Kingsmen have been eradicated, save for Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and Merlin (Mark Strong). The two head to America to chase down some help. There's a vast conspiracy afoot, and the boys are going to need every little favor they can wrangle.

Pros:

Stylish Action: Matthew Vaughn is great at visualizing epic fight scenes. They are kinetic and intense in interesting ways. He uses his camera like an active participant, flipping, rotating and panning around the field to root the audience in the experience. The film has its weaknesses, but it is hard not to get into the fun when the bullets start flying. Especially the big finale, set to Elton John's "Saturday's Alright For Fighting."

Bonkers: The Kingsman franchise has made absurdity its bread and butter. And, while it doesn't always work (more on that below), one can hardly fault Vaughn for sticking to his guns and committing to craziness. There are baseball hand grenades, cologne bottle grenades, a pair of robotic dogs named Bennie & Jet, a kidnapped Elton John, a human meat grinder, a laser lasso, and an evil villain's lair tucked away in some ancient jungle ruins. Vaughn took James Bond's sense of arch shenanigans and dialed it all the way up to eleven.

Cons:

A Film of Contradictions: This movie has something to say. It is laden with bits and bobs of serious messaging that interrupt the fun throughout the film. The problem is, I don't know what it is trying to say. Vaughn uses Fox News as the main news outlet for America, but never makes clear whether he respects them as a news organization, or if he's attempting to lampoon them. His messaging on using drugs can be summed up as, "everyone uses drugs!" His caricature of the American president as a man willing to let hundreds of millions of people die from poisoned drugs (it's complicated) to score a win in the War on Drugs is too simplistic and childish to be fun, funny, or clever. Julianne Moore has some fun as a kind of Martha Stewart-cum-Supervillain, but the film never seems interested in exploring her mania: the kind of mania that establishes a weirdo 50's nostalgia-laden lair in the jungle, replete with a diner, a movie theater, and a salon. The film really doesn't know what to do with its women. The film has Eggsy's romantic relationship with a Swedish princess get serious, but not really: she is shunted to the background for almost the entire film, except when Eggsy calls her, while on mission, because he feels bad about the fact that he's about the fuck some chick at Glastonbury, and expects some kind of kudos for that. The only female Kingsmen agent? Unceremoniously exploded by a missile in the opening scene. That Glastonbury fuck-bunny? Exploded in a mountain lair. The main supervillain of the whole movie? Just sort of forgot about for nearly the entire runtime. She is neither as tough, interesting, or clever as she was built to be, either. They just kind of walk in, inject her with heroin (yeah, it's complicated (I mean, it isn't but I am not going to waste any more of my time or your time trying to explain this shit)), get the super-secret password (for a briefcase that will activate drones to deliver the antidote to EVERYONE in the world (yeah, the heroes don't actually have to save the day; they just have to type in a password, because the villain had already saved the day ahead of time...)), and then we get an extra boss-battle that feels like it has just been tacked on for no reason, other than the manufacture some kind of tension. The film seems to be relishing the Bond series' contempt for women, and that's the kind of shit that should have been left in the rubbish bin of history. As bonkers as this movie is, it is also counterweighted by scenes that just drag and seem to waste time, inflating the film's runtime to an unnecessary 141 minutes.

What Happens at Glastonbury, Stays at Glastonbury: The scene where Eggsy has to sleep with a mark in order to insert a tracking device into their mucus membrane. Yeah, not the nose, either. Are you starting to visualize where this is going? The film goes there. We even get an absurd shot of Eggsy's finger, with the tracking device on a small rubber condom, tracing down a skeletally thin woman's stomach, crossing the elastic band of her panties, and then, oh lord, we get a super CG zoom in of the tracking device... attaching itself to the inside of her vagina. And that is a sentence that I never conceptualized I would write. And the scene isn't nearly as fun or funny as Vaughn seems to think it is. It's gross. And Weird.

Sacrifice Undone: Spoilers for the first film: Colin Firth's character, Harry, dies in the first Kingsman movie. After a spectacular shoot out in a church (yeah), he gets taken down by the film's main antagonist. But then... Kingsman: The Golden Circle just... brings him back. And I don't have a problem with nanobite technology that can heal a head wound: we exist in a world where Pedro Pascal cuts a man in half with a laser lasso. I can handle absurdity. What I can't abide is how the film just undoes one of the first film's real emotional moments. And doesn't seem to do anything with it. Harry's back. And he's fine. The death of the father figure has become a trope for a reason: it works. It is a moment in every hero's life where they realize they need to get their shit together, and get serious. You can't have your cake, and eat it, too, unless you're Gandalf the fucking Grey, alright? And this unnecessary revival cuts THIS film's big sacrifice, Merlin taking a land mine for the team. Let's just side-step around the fact that Eggsy steps on a landmine with a baseball bat land mine detector in hand (yeah), and let's just take a wide birth around the face that the film of a thousand gadgets doesn't have a single fucking gadget to undo this (or, rather, that Merlin DOES have a gadget, but it really only gives them enough time for him to shove Eggsy off it, and himself ON it: switching places), and let's also do a jig around the fact that, after Merlin explodes, the boys just full-on assault the villain's lair, with no hint of stealth or secrecy (which sort of negates the reason for Merlin wanting to stay on the mine, so it would explode the bomb at the exact right moment, giving his boys an advantage), and let's just say this: if the first guy can come back from being shot in the face, point blank, it is hard for me to believe that any other serious deaths cannot be undone. And that's a waste of Mark Strong, right there.

The Thrill is Gone: While the first film felt fresh and innovative, this one feels like it is tired, and lampooning itself. While no one expects the plot of such an action film to be "clever," it is another thing entirely when the plot reads as exceedingly fucking stupid. I found myself frequently checking social media for new posts and comments during the film's run, just to give myself something else to look at.

In Conclusion:

I was so excited for this movie. I was ready to embrace it as a flawed, but fun romp. What it was, was confused, bloated, and nonsensical. That is deeply disappointing.

Should You Watch It?

No. If you watched the first one, and liked it, leave it at that. If you haven't seen either movie, just... ya know... forget that this one exists.

Miscellany:

- The original cut of this movie was three hours and forty minutes long. The producers even asked Vaughn is he wanted to cut it into two movies. Nah, I'll just strip the thing down until it makes no sense, he said, I imagine.

- Mark Strong recorded a Theatre Etiquette message that played before the movie in the UK, in character as Merlin. That's fun.
- The franchise is VERY loosely based on a comic series of the same name.
- There are a lot more "interesting" things about this movie, but I refuse to waste my valuable time researching them, or writing about them here.