Movie Review: Kingsman - The Golden Circle

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Fun, over the top action and laughs

Cons: Violence and sex goes further than necessary, even for laughs

The Bottom Line:

Over the top fun

Sex, violence to go too far

Still good for some laughs

“What’s the Doomsday Protocol?”  “We Go Shopping.”

The friend who originally suggested we watch the first Kingsman movie had already seen the second, Kingsman: The Golden Circle.  He warned me that it wasn’t at all good.  Still, I felt the need to watch it, if only to see how they brought back one character.  Honestly, I felt like it was pretty much as good as the first, which means it’s just middle of the road.

When we rejoin Eggys (Taron Egerton), life is good.  Yes, he’s still working for Kingsman, the super secret spy organization in England.  And that can mean he has unexpected attempts on his life, like an attack from Charlie (Edward Holcroft).  But he’s very happy with his girlfriend, Princess Tilde (Hanna Alström), and he has a good circle of friends.

However, all that changes when an attack comes on Kingsman, taking out almost the entire organization.  The attack is the work of Poppy (Julianna Moore), a drug dealer with an evil plan all her own.  Eggys’s attempts to figure out what to do next take him to America, where a huge surprise is waiting for him.  What will it mean?

As with the first one, this is a comedic take on the spy genre.  Emphasis on comedy.  Everything is over the top, but especially the villain and her plan.

That also includes the action sequences.  If you don’t go in expecting that, you’ll be thrown by the opening minutes which are out there.  But if you go in expecting it, you’ll enjoy it for what it is.

While you can’t take much of the movie seriously, it still manages to make you take it seriously.  Yes, you know how most things are going to turn out, but they still pull you in anyway.  It’s one of those things where you can’t help but get caught up in the plot even though you know it is ridiculous.

This is an R rated film, so take that seriously.  Even watching this one on TV, there was a fair amount of language, sex and violence.  Like the first one, the violence and sex was sometimes played for laughs, but that didn’t really help the movie, in my opinion.  I found those scenes to be among the most disgusting, in fact.  Fortunately, they weren’t dragged out, at least in the TV version I saw.

All told, Kingsman: The Golden Circle is a ridiculous movie, but a diverting way to spend almost two and a half hours.  No, it isn’t a great movie.  Yes, it has issues.  But I’ve seen much worse movies.