Film Review: Kingsman: The Golden Circle

If you’re not familiar with the original film, Kingsman is basically a spoof on James Bond-style spy movies. There’s action, adventure, intrigue, espionage, fast cars, fast women, lots of fights and gun battles with the standard good versus evil as the main theme. Adhering to the James Bond philosophy, it’s not just evil, it’s world domination. We’re talking a much higher level than North Korea’s verbal attack on the United States. We are talking the World, the entire planet Earth. That means every person on the planet is in jeopardy. Now that is what I called world domination.  It makes the conflict in the Middle East look like a schoolyard brawl. OK let’s get back to the movie. 

Our James Bond style hero named “Eggsy” (Taron Egerton) and his trainer Merlon (Mark Strong) is once again called in the action to battle a new world threat in the form of Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore) an evil genius who has devised a chemical poisoning which she has inserted into all forms of illegal drugs (marijuana, heroin, cocaine, you get it).  So unless the United States gives her what she wants she will not provide the antidote to save the people of the world who are infected. Of course, the response by the US President (Bruce Greenwood) is let her think he’ll do what she says, but “hell these are all drug users let them all die.”  I don’t know if that was a reference to the Trump philosophy of combating the drug issue or not but the way it was portrayed was very hysterical.  To learn more about Eggsy’ history you’ll have to see the first movie.

Let’s face it, this is not a Hollywood masterpiece and many critics may dislike it for the lunacy of most scenes in the film. But this film is not intended to be educational nor moving. It is a funny spoof taken with a slant towards the serious and it works. Otherwise, how could you explain bringing a dead agent (Colin Firth) back to life after he was shot point blank in the eye and died in the last movie?  On dam, did I give something away?  Let me give you some advice.  If you want to enjoy this movie, even more, see the first film.  There are a lot of jokes and gags that won’t make sense unless you already saw the first film.  Then it becomes even funnier.  The movie had an amazing cast with Mark Strong, Halle Berry, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, and an absolutely hysterical performance by Sir Elton John.

By all means, go see this film and make sure you buy that big bucket of popcorn. For a film that is almost 2 1/2 hours, you’ll need to get the free refill. 

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