By Jack Beck ’18
I considered the first Kingsman movie, “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” to be one of the best movies of 2015. It had the right combination of action, humor and graphic violence to entertain all. “The Secret Service” introduced a rising young star named Taron Egerton who played Eggsy Unwin, a 17-year-old man who was trained by Kingsman Harry Hart, played by Colin Firth, to be a super spy in his organization.
“My family and I saw the first Kingsman, loved it, and immediately said we had to go see the second one,” Hannah Roseme ’18 said.
Director Matthew Vaughn discussed with Vulture.com the new film. He made sure to mention that he wasn’t making a sequel. He was continuing the story.
The second installment,“Kingsman: The Golden Circle,” takes place a year after the events in the first film. While Eggsy had a dinner with his girlfriend, Princess Tilde of Sweden, and her parents, the entire Kingsman organization gets wiped out by a major attack from Poppy Adams, who runs a major covert international illegal drug operations from Cambodia called the Golden Circle.
Following this attack, Eggsy and fellow survivor Merlin find their way to Kentucky, USA and connect with a parallel spy organization based in a whisky factory called Statesman. Meanwhile, Poppy announced that she held the world hostage with a fatal toxin to pressure the US President to legalize drugs.
“I loved how the new movie included a drug cartel,” Casey Rubin ’19 said. “It brings a whole new aspect to the movie and opens a whole new variety of possible plot lines for future episodes.”
While this sequel still had the moments of slick action and British humor, I felt that the plotting and writing was not as sharp as the original. I thought it was too early in the series to decimate the entire Kingsman organization just like that.
They then introduce us to a new set of American agents with different quirks and weapons, as if they could not come up with anything more to tell about the British agents.
“I think the director was trying to make the second movie just bigger, funnier and just plain crazier, but ultimately I think it made the movie worse off,” Steven Frost ’18 said.
Taron Egerton, as cocky and sentimental Eggsy, Mark Strong, as the ever efficient and ever loyal Merlin, and ever reliable Colin Firth as the back-to-life-with-one-eye Harry, delivered as expected. Their scenes with their dashing flair and gravity defying moves are the best in the movie.
“Most kids grow up hoping that they can live a secret life, a side life, as a spy. That is why Kingsman is so appealing to all audiences,” Colin Firth said in an interview with The Guardian.
The introduction of Poppy Adams, played by Julianne Moore, is a perfect combination of sweet, sinister and sadistic. Poppy’s grand pot with the toxin-laced drugs was over the top, but felt very current, with the real-time war on drugs issues lately.
Overall, this film was still a very entertaining movie to watch, even if it had some pretty messy excesses as symptoms of its “sequelitis.” I also had some misgivings about the premature demise of the Kingsman group in just the second film in the series.
There is no release date for the third Kingsman, but writer Jane Goodman has already hinted at bringing back the series for a third movie.
“Weirdly while we were writing Kingsman 2, we were thinking of Kingsman 3 as well, which is odd. We’ve got a big idea for that,” Goodman said. “This is sort of the bridge and if we can pull this off, we’ll make another one.”
I personally give this a 6 out of 10.
