Kingsman: The Golden Circle- British meets American Intelligence

"Manners... maketh... man. Let me translate that for you." - Whiskey.

Several days ago alongside my girlfriend and brother, we took in a late evening show of the latest action spy film from 20th Century Fox, Kingsman: The Golden Circle. 

The movie was enjoyable enough, it had many of the same earmarks of the first movie, action, spy drama, and many returning characters in addition to new ones. There was sadly a lot of problems with it too, such as the newer characters not getting much in the way of backstory, plus a plot that felt a lot more loose in some respects.

Matthew Vaughn does a decent enough job as director. His forays into other comic book related properties include Kick-Ass, Kingsman and X-Men: First Class. However this time around his directing takes a different spin, going more in favor of a Michael Bay style. Meaning that while there is a story, it is pushed aside in favor of stylized action sequences that while nice to look at, don't do much in the way of advancing things. It doesn't help that this is a sequel movie based off a comic book series that for the longest time, didn't have a follow up until recent months.

Taron Egerton's return as Eggsy is very welcome however. His character has a lot of strong growth throughout the movie, both in his role as spy and on a personal level (no spoilers here). He is also sporting that spiffy orange tuxedo seen in trailers and on posters, plus a lot of new Kingsman gadgets, as well as some toys from the organization's American cousins, the Statesmen.

Statesmen, an independent American spy group that all have a heavy cowboy/rancher motif going, not to mention using six-gun, lassos, whips etc. as their main field weapons. It almost feels like Vaughn took elements from old John Wayne movies and glued them together with James Bond elements, with this being the end result. That's not to say that the group isn't bad. Jeff Bridges as the head of the team is a fun choice, plus Halle Berry as the American version of Mark Strong's character Merlin. Channing Tatum and Pedro Pascal are the two main field agents, and while both of them have cool outfits and awesome fighting styles, they don't really have anything in the way of backstories. None of the group do, which is one of the biggest things that threw me off and causes the movie to fall short of expectations.

  

On the other hand, both Colin Firth and Mark Strong returning to their roles of Harry and Merlin did exceptional. They are already top notch actors so coming back to roles that already have given them more acclaim, is somewhat like getting back on a bicycle, but adding new shocks to change things up. In this case the shocks being more character development for each of them, making their roles stronger.

For the villain, Julianne Moore steps into the ring as Poppy Adams, an international drug crime-lord looking to make a big splashy reveal to the world. Not unlike Samuel L. Jackson's performance of Richmond Valentine, Poppy is very thematic foe, on par with James Bond rogues of old. Her mission, a twisted agenda that includes what can be likened to a form of global control (though not in the way one would expect).

Old faces returning and new faces coming in make this a fun movie. And the fighting/spy action is great to watch. But there is still that issue of the Statesmen characters not having a very strong background or backstory, they are just the American equivalent of Kingsmen. Another big issue is that Sophie Cookson's role of Roxy Morton/Lancelot is really given next to nothing this time around. There is a lot of potential for her character and its utterly wasted. It's almost as if Matthew Vaughn cared so little for what her performance could bring to the movie, he chose to sideline her almost immediately.

Despite the action and excitement of there being a sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle doesn't totally come up to the line on the same level as its predecessor. It's a fine and dandy piece of work to be sure, but there's so much more that could have been done with it. I still encourage everyone to see it, but my rating for this one is going to have to be 3 stars out of 5 for the various detraction's I mentioned earlier.