Kingsman: The Golden Circle bogged down by length, aimless plot

Taron Egerton in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Image courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle gets off to about as brilliant of a start as a sequel can. Within two minutes the movie reestablishes its protagonist (Taron Egerton's spy Eggsy/Galahad), introduces his main rival (Edward Holcroft as Charlie), and launches into an entertaining car fight sequence scored by Prince's Let's Go Crazy. The sequence works marvelously, a fun and exciting way of getting the audience involved immediately into the action, a testament to efficient and effective writing can do, aided greatly by director Matthew Vaughn's eye for a well executed fight scene.The movie is sprinkled with some quality action sequences; none quite as insane and addicting as the brutal battle royale Colin Firth engaged in at the church in the first Kingsman, but there remain a bevy of unique, well executed and crowd pleasing fights to appease the audience's desire. If it could have kept that pace, The Golden Circle would be a hell of an action movie with some fun spy elements in between.

Yet the movie can't sustain the pace it set in the opener. Even after literally blowing up the eponymous organization (save Mark Strong's Merlin) and introducing some Kentucky equivalents (Channing Tatum, Halle Berry, Pedro Pascal and Jeff Bridges), The Golden Circle loses itself to unwanted plot machinations that ultimately go nowhere and provide no incentive for the viewers to stick around. It's the downside to having what could be an action movie with a run time of nearly two and a half hours, as the audience is stuck wading through the some awkward sequences spliced together to resemble a plot, taking its sweet time to get to the fireworks factory. And what makes for a plot is not worth getting invested in, focusing on a crazed drug lord (admittedly a rather fun Julianne Moore) poisoning millions of people to legalize recreational drug use. Her wish is to leave her jungle fortress and move back to America a very, very wealthy woman, which is a less than captivating villainous motivation. She's vicious through the process, forcing henchmen to murder each other and threatening Elton John (a highlight) with (poorly rendered) robot dogs, but the reasons for her madness lack punch and interest, especially for a genre in which evil intentions are the key to so much success.

Somewhere within The Golden Circle, Vaughn and co-writer Jane Goldman have a point for what they're trying to say about legalizing drugs. It is in there, between Moore's dreams of returning home and the counterpoint of allowing millions of drug users to die for their sins, about some sort of middle ground between the two? Whatever that sweet spot between abandoning social mores for profit and allowing for the slaughter of millions of people, Vaughn and Goldman take aim for it. That they don't know exactly what they're targeting, or the reason why that point may be of value, isn't exactly a surprise in a movie that otherwise doesn't regard nuance as an important ingredient. (To be fair, lacking nuance not a knock against the film, just a state of being for the franchise.)

What's more frustrating is the return of Firth as Harry/the original Galahad. While having Firth around is always a pleasure, but his appearance in this movie undercuts one of the key emotional scenes in the first film, in which he gets shot in the face by Samuel L. Jackson and (supposedly) dies. How he survived between The Secret Service and The Golden Circle is asinine and a screenwriting cheat, enough to frustrate viewers into questioning whether or not any death in this movie's universe truly matters. It wouldn't be surprising if more characters killed in this movie wind up being not dead in the third installment for reasons. If there's nothing truly at stake, if characters can just show up again after death, than any emotional scenes lose their desired resonance.

The give and take with The Golden Circle is the blend of solid action sequences (and general charms of Firth, Strong and Moore) countered by the egregiously long run time and poor plot. Viewers have to sift through a lot of content to get to the parts where Vaughn shines, and the number of those moments are fewer and of a greater distance than they should be. When it's at its best, The Golden Circle provides enough of what viewers want in an action movie to maintain viewer excitement and showcase Vaughn’s chops as an action director. More often than not though the movie never reaches that benchmark.

Review: Two and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 141 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: Fans of the first movie and folks down for some charming British violence.

Take the whole family?: Yeah… this one gets a little bloody and gory. Keep the kids away.

Theater or Netflix?: Not much to see for a theater trip.

How involved is Channing Tatum in this movie?: Not as much as hoped. After popping by for a pretty fun fight scene at the start of the second act, Tatum spends much of the movie on ice. It's pretty disappointing considering how much fun the movie could be with him added to the fray; without him, things just aren't quite as interesting as they should be.

Watch this instead?: Watching the brilliant church scene from the first movie on YouTube is worth it. For media with a little more length, revisit the James Bond classic Goldfinger.