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.

One last game, for old times' sake

Jennifer Lawrence stars in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2." Image courtesy Lionsgate

“Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2” leaves a mildly bitter taste on the tongue immediately after viewing, a sensation linked directly to the middling dialogue and a silly ending in the same vein as the last few moments of the “Harry Potter” finale a few years back. Yet for a film targeted at a young demographic, it has a pretty excellent stew-quality to it; mulling it over for a night or so results in a hint more respect for it than the initial impression leaves. It's still not great and a bit of a letdown for a series that hasn't had a below-par movie, but it deserves brownie points for thematic depth and emotional heaviness despite its frequent trips into camp territory.

“Mockingjay” kicks off right after the conclusion of the first part, with heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) recovering after she is strangled by brainwashed romantic interest Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson). The scene itself features poor Lawrence attempting to speak with bruise marks still on her throat, an idea that sounds strong on paper but is a better vehicle for unintentional laughter than emotional resonance.

Nevertheless, Lawrence is quite peeved by what happened to her (possibly) beloved Hutcherson, and she hatches a plan to assassinate the evil President Snow (a ridiculous, over the top Donald Sutherland) for revenge. Her mission comes against the wishes of steely rebel leader Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) and the mysterious Pluutarch (a dearly missed Philip Seymour Hoffman), but she sneaks her way to the front lines of the war anyway and she joins her other beloved, Gail Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth). Both are placed on a special squad for the rebels' invasion of the capitol, along with Hutcherson, the charming Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin) and squad leader Boggs (Mahershala Ali), to film propaganda pieces and strike fear into the hearts of the Capitol. A relatively safe mission goes awry thanks to Sutherland's idea of turning the city streets into yet another round of Hunger Games, forcing Lawrence and her team to fight for their lives as they march toward Sutherland's mansion. Woody Harrelson pops in and out as Lawrence’s mentor Haymitch Abernathy to offer token bits of wisdom, while Jeffrey Wright, Jena Malone, Elizabeth Banks, Willow Shields and Stanley Tucci return to their respective roles to pad out the runtime for a few moments.

A film as long as “Mockingjay” shouldn’t need the padding, and the two-plus hour movie often feels much longer than that. The film is slowed down by scenes that add little to nothing to the narrative flow, except to try and justify splitting the third book in Suzanne Collins' popular young adult series into two films. It never quite works, and the result is two OK films with far too much fat instead of one pretty good that's three hours long but comparably lean to the four-and-a-half hours combined length of these two flicks.

So what do viewers get with the extra time with Katniss and her friends? A fair amount of relationship drama – the weakest part of the series by far, although Malone's character provides a nice meta jab at its inanity – and really miserable dialogue that provide more of that unintentional humor mentioned earlier. Audience members are blessed too with lazy writing tricks – Sutherland's Snow employs the blood in the handkerchief trope – and a few scenes of Lawrence looking confounded. Lawrence is more often than not a terrific actress, but “Mockingjay” brings out the worst in her. She’s horridly entertaining in her two big emotional scenes; then again, she is reacting to an especially bored cat and an disengaged baby.

It takes more digging than it should to get past the annoyances, but there is something worthwhile within “Mockingjay's” heart. It's a morally complex film, with the idea of doing the right thing often a pipe dream given the realities of war. War is a dirty contest in this film, a fact represented by the amount of grime and sewage contestants have to wade through to fight, and it becomes even messier when the characters debate exactly how far they are willing to go to win. Even Lawrence's Katniss, who state emphatically her moral boundaries during wartime, finds it difficult to stick with that moral rigidity when the opportunity for revenge arises.

So do the ends justify the means? Not quite in “Mockingjay,” as the film acknowledges there is at least one major line – eerily reminiscent of the attacks in Paris last week – that should not be crossed. It's a brutal scene carried over from the source material and presented with striking simplicity by the filmmakers, and it turns what is a dark series into an absolute horror. It's a moment that emphasizes the hopelessness of the war and Lawrence's quest; people who fight evil never leave the fight as pure as they entered it.

Review: Three out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 137 minutes (Two hours and 17 minutes)

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: Teen girls and fans of the either the books or the rest of the film series.

Take the whole family?: Kids will get turned off a bit by the explosions and a rather horrifying plot twist, so keep children younger than 10 at home.

Theater or Netflix?: Probably could wait until its available on home viewing, but stick with matinee if opting to see it on a large screen.

Is Jennifer Lawrence worth the money?: Lawrence, who will apparently make $20 million for her upcoming film “Passengers,” has more than justified an increase in pay. Even if her acting isn't up to her own standards in this one, she's still the face of a major box-office film series, and she is a leading figure in the “X-Men” series to boot. The star system is overrated for sure, but Lawrence has earned that money based on the rules of the game.

Watch this as well?: “Catching Fire” is the best individual entry in the series – Philip Seymour Hoffman is great, and the action is much tighter than the rest of the series. Similarly, check out the third “Harry Potter” film, “The Prisoner of Azkaban,” which is by far the best in that series and is a terrific standalone film.