For my
money, not quite as good as the first film but still a ton of fun. It was great to get back to the old Kingsman
gang and see some new characters joining the mix as well. Even if the returns diminish slightly, I’m
all in for seeing whatever else this team has to throw at me (personally, I
think it looks poised for a trilogy, and I’d be cool with that.)
When a
Big Bad targets Kingsman in a pretty devastating way, Eggsy and Merlin look
across the pond for help from their heretofore-unknown American “cousins”: Statesman, a similarly-audacious intelligence
agency with crazy spy gear and killer moves, opting for a Southern gent aesthetic
rather than the posh thing Kingsman has going on. Using Kingsman’s knowledge and Statesman’s
resources, the two agencies have to work together to stop a diabolical plot
from a villain who’s both insanely ludicrous and genuinely despicable.
I love
seeing Eggsy again, how he’s grown as both an agent and a person (side
note: I appreciate that Princess Tilde
from the first movie wasn’t just a typical James Bond-style conquest and
reappears in this film as Eggsy’s serious girlfriend. It’s a nice way to play against the
stereotype.) He and Merlin make a good
team, and the addition of the Americans gives the actions scenes a fun
dynamic. In particular, I love Agent Whiskey’s
mad lasso and bullwhip skills, but Eggsy seriously brings it on the badass-spy
front, too. If you’ve seen the trailers,
it’s not a surprise that Colin Firth is back as Harry. I won’t spoil the details of his return, but
the scenes between him and Eggsy carry a lot of weight and add a good deal to
the story.
Speaking
of the story, the villain plot offers up some deceptively-smart themes for such
an outlandish movie. In between the death-by-meat-grinder
moments, killer robot dogs, and Elton John cameos, the film has some
interesting things to say about the war on drugs and its toll in human
lives. Poppy, the new villain, has a lot
in common with Valentine from the first film – ridiculously kooky but
absolutely ruthless and highly effective – although she has enough of her own
thing going on that she never feels like a retread.
I know I
said I didn’t like it quite as well as the first film and then listed a bunch
of good things about it, which doesn’t strictly make sense. But it’s hard to put my finger on exactly why
it works a little less. It has plenty of
great stuff going for it, but for me, all the moving parts are just shy of adding up. It’s just in little things here and there – a
moment that doesn’t go quite far enough, another that’s a bit too much. A lot of it, I’m sure, is just how out-there
the first Kingsman was when I saw it
two years ago. There’s a slight sense of
the new film getting up to the same old tricks to an extent, and even though
that’s a good thing (don’t fix what isn’t broke,) it doesn’t quite capture the
irreverent freshness of its predecessor.
The
acting is still awesome. The returning
cast members, like Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, and Mark Strong, all do a
bang-up job, and the new actors on the Statesman side lean strongly into the
Americana cowboy angle without it getting too hokey. I was surprised at how little Channing Tatum’s
Agent Tequila is in the movie, but Jeff Bridges’s Champ, Halle Berry’s Ginger,
and Pedro Pascal’s Agent Whiskey (Oberyn from Game of Thones!) hold up their end quite handily. Meanwhile, as Poppy, Julianne Moore looks to
be having a great time taking enormous bites out of the scenery.
Warnings
Lots of
the old ultraviolence, sexual content, drinking/drug use, swearing, and
thematic elements.
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