The first Kingsman film was actually quite good for the most part. This was due to it's fresh take on the British action, spy genre and because of the director's vision of the film. Also there was a good cast and good writing. However, with Kingsman: The Golden Circle I wouldn't really state that lightning struck twice. What made the film originally good and unique ended up becoming an albatross for this sequel unfortunately. So Eggsy (not sure why the character doesn't really have a proper name yet) is now a full fledged "Kingsman" chasing down the bad guys and what not, except the hunters now become the hunted. A new criminal organization known as "The Golden Circle" destroy the entire Kingsman organization and thus the few remanining agents (Merlin and Eggsy) go to the United States in order to recruit the assistance of "The Statesman"; the American equivalent of the Kingsman. Together they partner to deal with this new deadly threat and save the world, encountering a few surprises along the way. Taron Egerton as Eggsy does a brilliant job of blending gentleman spy with modern British punk hipster; and I believe the young man has a great future of acting ahead of him. He's humorous, serious and get's to the point; there are some trite romantic moments, but nothing too ridiculous. Mark Strong as Merlin was good, but they tried to give him more depth, and I don't think it worked quite so well. Not to mention I didn't care for where the character ended up eventually. Julianne Moore played the villainess Poppy, and she was plenty evil and what not, but it was way over the top in a very obnoxious/outlandish way. Samuel Jackson was a much better and far more interesting villain. Channing Tatum played Tequila, an American Statesman, who was incredibly obnoxious and useless in the story. I don't know if I've ever really seen a movie that I liked this gentleman in. Jeff Bridges had a very small role, unfortunately, as the leader of the Statesman, but he did a good job. Pedro Pascal (played Oberon Martell in Game of Thrones) was agent Whiskey for the Statesman and their best agent apparently. He had a fairly complex storyline, but I still found him obnoxious. Surprisingly, Halle Berry (as Ginger) was not obnoxious whatsoever, and was perhaps the most pleasant of the American counterparts in Statesman; she essentially did what Merlin did, and she did it quite well. It would have been better to grow her character and eliminate Channing Tatum completely. Elton John had a role playing himself which was perhaps the most ridiculous part of the entire film, and completely unnecessary; it was for me what killed the film in the end.
I'm not certain what Matthew Vaughn was thinking when he wrote the screenplay and directed the film. He had so much he could have done with the film, and for some odd reason he took the project in the dumbest direction imaginable. I didn't care for the film, although I did like several parts of it. The direction of the story was the biggest problem with the film. The villain, Poppy, was too much; and her dream of selling her drugs legally or killing millions of people was not really interesting. The notion that all of the "Statesmen" are country western cowboys that are trigger happy lushes, didn't really thrill me that the United States was painted in such a light. And for the most part the action wasn't really that good. Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson composed the original music, but it was about as good and memorable as the film itself. The cinematography by George Richmond was good and sometimes very impressive, but without a good story or good direction it became lost amongst the obnoxiousness of everything else that was going on. Colin Firth may have been the best part of the whole film; although I did like Mark Strong and Taron Egerton a good deal, but they were not enough to make this film likable for me. It was entertaining, but I keep going back to Elton John and that just ruins it all. I don't really encourage anyone to see this film; it would be a waste of your time, especially when there are far better films to watch and divert oneself with. I don't know why Hollywood in general can't really create good sequels to good films; it's like an unbreakable curse for the most part. Exceptions to this curse are rare; George Lucas and Christopher Nolan are really the only directors/creators who made multiple sequels that were just as good if not sometimes better than the original.Colin Firth and Taron Egerton interview
Kingsman: The Golden Circle trailer
