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

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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.

Life in pictures, in a picture

Josh Brolin in a scene from "Hail, Caesar!" Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

Picking on Hollywood for being shallow and vainglorious and outright artificial is both easy and passé, at least when its done by lesser hands. “Hail, Caesar!” – a flick that teases Hollywood for the reasons listed above and more – is, fortunately, a Coen Brothers film, which automatically grants this movie a little more panache than it would have otherwise. And while even cinema’s greatest sibling pairing can’t avoid the trappings of the insider flick, their version flashes the brothers’ eccentric mindset, and it’s quite clear the brothers mock with love, not viciousness.

Based on the imagination of the Joel and Ethan Coen, “Hail, Caesar!” stars the terrific Josh Brolin as the perfectly named Eddie Mannix, a Hollywood studio head defined by his efficiency, tireless work ethic, and perfect mustache. Taking place over the course of around 28 hours or so, the film catches Brolin amid his day-to-day business dealings, including breaking up illicit photo sessions with a starlet, converting oater star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) into the star of a Douglas Sirk-esque flick (directed by Ralph Fiennes), and arranging to have pregnant star DeeAnna Morgan (Scarlett Johansson) married off before her child is born. The man has a pretty busy life, and it gets all the crazier when the star of his upcoming blockbuster “Hail, Caesar!” Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is kidnapped by a gaggle of communist writers and held for ransom. All of that comes on the same day that Brolin must decide if he'll take a management position with Lockheed Martin, a job that offers better pay, better hours and far less insanity. Throughout the day he also visits a slew of characters played by Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Frances McDormand, Alison Pill and an armada of that guys.

“Hail, Caesar!” is a rather silly little film made by two of the best filmmakers of all time, which makes it something more than a silly little film. A Coen Brothers film is guaranteed to have more going on than what it shows, and there is certainly something bubbling beneath the surface of Clooney's innocent mugging and sly gay jokes at Tatum's expense. There's definitely religious undertones – a bit heavy handed, although perhaps a jab at their own reliance on them? – as well as commentary about the McCarthy era and about the pettiness of Hollywood life, topics that have been covered frequently, including by the Coens themselves in movies like “Barton Fink.”

Few filmmakers would wrap those subjects in such a bright, shiny ribbon as the Coen Boys do. The brothers weave in era-appropriate dance numbers, synchronized swimming routines and even a lovely little cowboy song into the swing of thing, weaving in footage of films within the universe depicted in “Hail, Caesar!” – including the titular flick featuring Clooney's Whitman – with the reality in which those films are shot. The divide between the film’s reality and the films within the film become difficult to parse as the movie goes on; Michael Gambon's narrator provides voiceover for “Hail, Caesar!” the movie and “Hail, Caesar!” the movie within the movie and stars will find themselves reenacting scenes from their own films in the fake real life. Two of the actors even start singing a song together that, in most films, would lead into a full-on musical number (the fact it doesn't and ultimately segues into a sequence befitting a noir thriller is totally Coen).

The downside of the blurring reality is the effect it has on the plot machinations. The Coens paint themselves into a corner when it comes to the resolution for the internal strife Brolin's Mannix faces; there is only one way the film could end because “Hail, Caesar!” follows the same rules as the fake movies it parodies adoringly. It's not the first time the Coen Brothers have run up against this problem, and it kills the sense of uncertainty featured in their best work.

Darn it though if the movie itself isn't a blast. The Coen boys know their way around fast talking characters, and the actors they enlist are up to the challenge of revisiting a strange time in filmmaking history. “Hail, Caesar!” certainly never reaches the brilliance of “No Country for Old Men” or “Fargo” or “Miller's Crossing” or “The Big Lebowski” or “Raising Arizona,” but it is just fine as it is; a fun, smart and peculiar little film.

Review: Four out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 106 minute

Genre: Comedy

Ask Away

Target audience: Coen Brothers film fans and people who like screwball comedies.

Take the whole family?: There really isn't anything overly explicit about this film. The kids would get a little bored by it, but they won't require earmuffs either.

Theater or Netflix?: Good for a rainy day matinee.

Is this really a February film?: Even if this isn’t the best Coen Brothers film, the thing is much better than the average February selection. It’s not quite good enough on the whole to fit the late fall Oscar rush (although I hope Josh Brolin isn’t forgotten for next year’s Academy Awards) and this definitely isn’t a summer film either. Such a shame to waste a good film during the worst season for films.

Watch this as well?: Almost everything by the Coens is at least good, but “Barton Fink” and the cruelly underrated “Hudsucker Proxy” exhibit the filmmakers' quirky take on Hollywood life and love for fast talking films, respectively. Also flag down Robert Altman's “The Player,” which features “Hudsucker Proxy” lead Tim Robbins as a darker version of Brolin’s Eddie Mannix.