A Golden Sequel Being Treated Unfairly
The first Kingsman movie was quite a surprising success as it did pretty well critically and in the box office. The first film was a contained movie that felt like a James Bond parody with a lot of heart and important characters and their stories to tell. In Kingsman: The Golden Circle that hasn’t changed as the James Bond parody with its hearty characters and full speed ahead action is back with double the bang and it’s worth it.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle continues on from Kingsman: The Secret Service as Kingsman is now up and running again and Eggsy is dating Princess Tilde. All is well with the Kingsman until the big baddie of the film Poppy destroys the Kingsman base as well as every agent except for Eggsy and the tech-savvy Merlin. The last two remaining members of Kingsman have to seek the help of their American brothers, The Statesman, to help stop Poppy and her global drug epidemic which slowly kills drug users.
Remember the scene from the first Kingsman movie, you know the scene I’m talking about, where Colin Firth’s Harry Hart goes on a rampage and action is unlike anything you’ve seen before? Well, that action is used all throughout The Golden Circle as the action starts to creep forward to become the main aspect of the film. Usually, this would mean bad news for a sequel as the studio decides that the action was cool so they want more of that. What The Golden Circle does with that action is what makes the movie worth seeing.
The Golden Circle comes with a lot of heart and emotion and that is mixed in with the super stylised action scenes. With the return of Harry Hart you have his emotional trauma while Pedro Pascal’s character Whiskey is lassoing guys to their deaths. The amount of times The Golden Circle made me feel sad to the point of crying was way more than I was expecting out of any film this year. With all the action being so over the top and crazy it is justified with the emotion that comes with the characters as each one has a certain amount of baggage that they bring to each mission.
The film is also the funniest it’s ever been, The Secret Service was funny as well but after a few viewings it slowly died off. The comedy in The Golden Circle, however, has me telling people about it and informing them on another reason why the film is better than its predecessor. Elton John’s cameo, for example, is a far bigger role than you would expect and one that’ll easily make you blast his greatest hits on the way home from the cinema. Poppy as a villain is also both funny and diabolical as well as she is the perfect amount of crazy for the film, she would be perfect alongside Valentine from The Secret Service.
I want to end this review differently by just stating a bit of well expressing my anger, if you don’t mind and if you do mind I gave the film 4.5/5 and you can stop reading now if you want. If you’re still here, Kingsman: The Golden Circle currently sits on Metacritic at a pretty dismal 45/100 because of a bunch of negative and mixed reviews. These reviews mention things like how the film is filled with recycled bond gags, the other actors in the film don’t get much screen time, how the film is inexplicably unentertaining, that the movie simply isn’t a good time or that the film is too comic book like. I think that you should see the film for yourself and make a judgement on it yourself as a majority of film critics clearly have some sort of exhaustion of movies like Kingsman, or comic book movies in general. A film review should be your experience with the film and it’s your job as a critic to point out who the film is for and not simply belabour a film because you yourself don’t get it. Kingsman isn’t recycling Bond gags, I don’t remember ever seeing Eggsy having a troublesome time deciding whether to cheat on his girl in the first film like Bond can easily do. Kingsman isn’t inexplicably unentertaining as there is obviously a reason why you didn’t like it because either you already didn’t like it or you’re just bored in which you should’ve bowed out from writing the review in the first place. Also, Kingsman is a comic book so obviously its going to be comic book movie like and actors, popular or not, can be in films all they want, half of the actors in Captain America Civil War are there for basically one scene only and that gets praised for being amazing. Kingsman doesn’t deserve this bullying that it’s receiving from critics and editors should maybe pick a reviewer who is more inclined to give the film a fair review over what has clearly happened.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle deserves your time and at least one viewing as it is an arty and entertaining film that, despite being long, is actually entertaining throughout. Go see it for yourself and go online and review it yourself as it has been unfairly picked out and bullied. Kingsman: The Golden Circle is better than The Secret Service and it is easily one of my favourite films of the year, it’s not the most perfect film ever but its simply a good time to be had if you ain’t trying to be so negative about everything.