"Kingsman: The Golden Circle" Review
This is the third movie I saw this year that features the music of John Denver and the second movie to star Channing Tatum.
The Kingsman are back at it again, but things are less dramatically potent this time around. The best thing "The Golden Circle" has going for it is its incredible cast. Colin Firth returns (spoilers?) and is able to provide the necessary emotional anchor that this movie so desperately needs. Julianne Moore is absolutely spectacular (can't say the say about her character but more on that later). Also Channing Tatum is there but is hopelessly underutilized. The action is also... quite something. It's insane and gratuitous and extremely well blocked but similar to the infamous church scene in the first one, the action sequences, although stunning to look at, mostly lack consequence which is fine after a while but it really forces you to overly exaggerate your suspense of disbelief. At least they're fun, especially the action in the third act... Oh my god.
For every amazing feat this movie is able to dazzle you with, there will be moments of incoherent plot decisions or weird character motivations (or lack thereof) that eclipses the good stuff. As much fun as I had watching people beat the crap out of each other, I can't help but wonder why I wasn't giving any reason for why Julianne Moore's character was doing the things she was doing and how we're able to base a nearly 2 and a half hour movie on such a hollow antagonist. The plot hinges on her motivation, and since we didn't get a motivation, it's no surprise that the movie's pacing grinds to a complete halt as soon as we switch from our heroes to Julianne Moore.
Overall, this doubles down on the mayhem from the first one but eliminates most of the character building (outside of the scenes involving Colin Firth) that made the first one so good. Also there's a weird and super unnecessary seduction scene that could've been replaced by something less convoluted and equally as effective. There was a 3 hour and 40 minute cut or something that was originally considered to be split into two parts. From an editing standpoint, the end product we got felt incomplete. Maybe it would've benefited from more scenes and explored some of its political subject matter better. But at this point, I kinda doubt it.