Review #1,285: 'Kingsman: The Golden Circle' (2017)

Having directed no fewer than three comic-book adaptations with Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class and Kingsman: The Secret Service, it's a wonder director Matthew Vaughn has taken so long to deliver a sequel. Kingsman took over 400 million at the box-office and was one of the surprise successes of 2014, and with critical and audience responses both overwhelmingly positive for the My Fair Lady-meets-James Bond spy comedy, a sequel was always going to be on the cards. With The Golden Circle, Vaughn and returning screenwriter Jane Goldman have taken the route of most sequels and made everything bigger, but not necessarily better. The Golden Circle may please some fans of the original with its lashings of ultra-violence and colourful language, but I suspect many will become sickly with the film's desire to throw everything at the screen to see what sticks.

A year on from preventing Samuel L. Jackson's plan to wipe out the majority of the world's population using mania-inducing SIM cards, and Eggsy (Taron Egerton) has settled well within the ranks of the Kingsman and has shacked up with Princess Tilde of Sweden (Hanna Alstrom). One night he is attacked by a former foe he had long thought dead: Charlie Hesketh (Edward Holcroft), the failed Kingsman applicant believed to have perished in the head-exploding finale of the previous film. Charlie is alive and well, and has been fitted with a hi-tech bionic arm capable of brute strength. Eggsy manages to overcome Charlie, but the severed arm hacks its way into the Kingsman's computer system. Soon enough, the majority of Britain's finest secret service has been taken out by long-range missiles. Along with Merlin (Mark Strong), Eggsy travels to the U.S. to investigate a clue left in the agency's Doomsday protocol, and discover a sister agency named the Statesman led by the gruff Champagne (Jeff Daniels).

The Statesman are like the Kingsman, only instead of bespoke suits and good table manners, they dress like cowboys and have nicknames based on alcoholic beverages. Channing Tatum's Tequila is first to greet them, and is understandably suspicious of this shadowy agency operating without their knowledge. There's also Whiskey (Pedro Pascal), and Merlin-equivalent tech genius Ginger Ale (Halle Berry). The bad guy this time around is Poppy (Julianne Moore), a Martha Stewart-like drug baron hiding out in Cambodia. Her master plan is to infect all users of her various drugs with a toxin that will soon cause their deaths unless the U.S. President puts an end to the War on Drugs. Poppy's outlandish plan, which would seem to damage Poppy's trade if successful or offer the President a chance to rid the world of drug abusers and Poppy's customers, is one of many problems with The Golden Circle. Armed with robot dogs and a kidnapped Elton John in an appearance that goes way beyond mere cameo, Vaughn and Goldman seem happy to suck out all sense of reality for this sequel, and with it have considerably lowered the stakes.

The movie's most glaring problem, however, is the return of Colin Firth's Harry Hart. Most of us were shocked and saddened when he received a bullet to the face from Samuel L. Jackson following the original's most spectacular scene, but to bring him back feels cheap, removing any sense of peril in the process. The action scenes, which involve everything from an electric whip to a man-chomping meat-grinder, rely heavily on CGI. The Secret Service did this too, but it also used practical effects to retain a sense of physicality when Harry was hacking, shooting and burning his way through a Church full of bigoted psychopaths. The newcomers all do well despite being left in the background for the majority of the running-time, with Tatum especially barely registering before he is placed into a coma. Highlights include Egerton's beautiful jaw-line and Strong's deadpan Merlin, but there is little resembling the freshness of the first film, which also managed to keep its outrageous ambitions in check by structuring the plot around Eggsy's Kingsman training. The Golden Circle is by no means the disaster many critics have cited, but by striding to take things to the next level, Vaughn has made Kingsman both cringe-inducingly silly and plain boring.


Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Mark Strong, Pedro Pascal, Halle Berry, Elton John, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges
Country: UK/USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #886: 'Kingsman: The Secret Service' (2014)

Manners. Maketh. Man. So says the dapperly-dressed secret agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth), right before he bars all exits and proceeds to glass, stab and maim an assortment of goons in that most British of locales, the pub. Kingsman, the latest film from Layer Cake (2004) and X-Men: First Class (2011) director Matthew Vaughn, and his second collaboration with comic-book writer Mark Millar (after 2010's Kick-Ass), is both completely preposterous and ridiculously entertaining, simultaneously mocking and paying homage to the traditional idea of Britishness in an ever-changing society, and no doubt infuriating many a Daily Mail reader in the process.

Harry Hart, a Harry Palmer-like gent, is a Kingsman; a highly secretive and unaligned ring of spies and agents who dress sharply and certainly know their manners. After an operation to rescue Professor Arnold (Mark Hamill) from a possible kidnapping plot sees one Kingsman agent disposed of in a particularly gruesome fashion, Harry is tasked with finding a replacement to fill the spot. The son of a former agent who saved Harry's life years previously, Eggsy (Taron Egerton), is now growing up in a council flat with his layabout mother and abusive stepfather. After a joyride lands him in the police station, Eggsy calls the number on the back of a Kingsman medal given to him by Harry when he was a child, and he is bailed.

Harry enters Eggsy into the trials to become a Kingsman agent along with a bunch of upper-class toffs who refer to Eggsy as a 'pleb'. The group of youngsters must perform a series of tasks under the watchful eye of Merlin (Mark Strong), involving escaping from a flooded room and shooting a dog in the head. Meanwhile, Harry investigates links from recent strange events to internet billionaire Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), a flamboyant man with a lisp and a fondness for wearing caps indoors. whose upcoming deal to offer SIM cards with free calls and internet to everybody for free reeks of conspiracy and may be related to an incident involving an exploding head.

When Harry and Valentine have their inevitable face-to-face sit-down moment, the two munch on Big Macs at Valentine's hideously decorated mansion while discussing the joys of the ludicrous Bond movies of old, when things weren't taken so seriously. Kingsman is an obvious Bond pastiche, with deadly gadgets, a henchman wielding an unconventional weapon (in this case - knives for feet), and an outrageous villain. It even comes as a surprise when Firth fails to raise an eyebrow while delivering a double entendre. It shows that these kinds of movies can still be fun without the shadow of uber-seriousness seen in the Daniel Craig Bond's and the recent Bourne movies lurking overhead, while telling the people who will be inevitably offended by the spurts of shocking violence to get a grip and remember that it's only a movie.

However, it did little to prepare me for the movie's key set-piece, which involves a church in Kentucky inhabited by a group of bigoted, right-wing religious types - and Harry - indulge in what can only be described as a pub-brawl massacre. I have never witnessed a scene that would usually be portrayed as a tragedy executed with such glee, with Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird blaring out while men and women are stabbed, shot, bludgeoned, set on fire and, in one particularly grisly moment, get slammed into a wall so hard it snaps their spine in two. It seems to go on and on, but it's an absolutely thrilling moment stocked full of cartoon violence, and will no doubt making some viewers expecting a light and funny experience wholly uncomfortable in the process.

It's sadly not all great. Eggsy's recruitment and training is formulaic and none of the tasks are particularly original or clever. This period of the film also keeps Eggsy and Harry apart for most of it, when their few scenes crackle with chemistry. But ultimately, Kingsman is an intriguing experience. bending to generic tropes while seemingly playing by its own rules. Firth displays a comedic willingness rarely seen and Egerton, who has popped up from nowhere, is a real find as the swaggering Eggsy, a baseball-cap wearing yoof who calls people 'bruv', who in most actors hands would have come across as extremely annoying. Kingsman dabbles in enough extreme violence to cause most viewers to question what they really enjoy seeing on screen, and it's a throwback with a modern twist, celebrating the days when movies could be fun, inexplicable and inconsequential, Just don't watch it with your nan.


Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Sofia Boutella, Michael Caine
Country: UK

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #494: 'Layer Cake' (2004)

This British gangster film was originally intended for director Guy Ritchie's typically heavy-handed approach, but thankfully, duty took him elsewhere and the gig landed in producer Matthew Vaughn's hands. Vaughn is now well-established amongst the Hollywood elite, having since gone on to direct the underrated Stardust (2007), the hugely entertaining Kick-Ass (2010), and the rather hit-and-miss X-Men: First Class (2011), but he made his name with this now-cult and extremely stylish little thriller that also paved the way for star Daniel Craig to become James Bond and an A-lister in one swoop. Vaughn's ability to stamp his quirky humour onto relatively familiar grounds is clear from the off, with Craig nameless protagonist (credited simply as XXXX) giving us the narration to his world, only this protagonist is about to get a massive life-lesson, and one that is quite suitable to our times.

XXXX is a successful cocaine dealer who, along with his cohorts Gene (Colm Meaney), Morty (George Harris), Terry (Tamer Hassan) and Clarkie (Tom Hardy), is on the verge of making the big deal that could see his retirement. "Have a plan, and stick to it," he tells us, only crime boss Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham) has different ideas. He sets XXXX the task of finding the daughter of larger crime lord Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon), a promising girl who has taken to drugs and since gone missing. Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, cocky gangster Duke (Jamie Foreman) has made a huge ecstasy heist but has stolen from the wrong person. All roads lead to XXXX, who finds himself pulled into a labyrinthine crime world where he starts to truly know his place.

This world of loud-mouthed gangsters and powerful old men in expensive suits that London (and the UK film industry) seems to enjoy mixing itself up with is frankly tiresome and has been done to death (especially in the straight-to-DVD market). Yet Layer Cake has less of the colourful, wise-cracking cock-er-neys and slow-motion bloodshed of Guy Ritchie's back catalogue, and shares more with the sleek, neon-lit world of Michael Mann. Although it does quite often border on style-over-substance, and the multi-stranded plot is not quite as clever as it thinks it is, the film is funny, entertaining and frequently surprising. The final moments especially pull the rug from beneath you when you think everything is nicely wrapped up.

The title refers to the social stratification of XXXX's world, and shows that it applies even to the criminal underworld, as well as business, social and political systems. XXXX thinks of himself as top dog, and in the opening scenes, we see him coolly going about his business - shades on, snappy suit, and he even takes the girl (Sienna Miller) of Duke's ridiculous nephew Sidney (Ben Whishaw). But his world, like our world, doesn't quite work like that. In the past year or so, we as the public have learned that we are mere cockroaches in a crushing capitalist country that vomits luxury onto the rich and powerful, and steals from the tax-payer. Like us, XXXX is chewed up by the system, giving him a slap-in-the-face dose of realism that he didn't see coming. The system is embodied by the towering Eddie Temple, in an effortlessly brilliant performance by a ridiculously fake-tanned Michael Gambon. This aspect is the main reason why this film stands out amongst its imitators. An introduction to an interesting film-maker and its intriguing star.


Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, George Harris, Kenneth Cranham, Jamie Foreman, Michael Gambon, Ben Whishaw, Sienna Miller, Dexter Fletcher
Country: UK

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #123: 'X-Men: First Class' (2011)

Things were looking good for the X-Men back in 2003. The first film was a box-office success and was a pretty solid blockbuster. Then X2 (2003) came and the bar was raised not only for X-Men films, but for superhero movies in general. Bryan Singer had made an exciting action film that had interesting, fully-developed and endearing characters. Then Singer dropped out in order to make Superman Returns (2006), and for some reason left the job to Hollywood shit-stain Brett Ratner. X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) was an over-populated, lazily directed mess, and Ratner had thought it would be a good idea to cast Vinnie Jones. It seemed to be the closure of the X-Men series, until X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) came along and gave a backstory to fan-favourite Wolverine. Even though it was directed by the Oscar-winning Gavin Hood (who directed the excellent Tsotsi (2005)), it was the worst of the lot. Studio interference has made it a bumbling, boring mess of a movie. But still the X-train carries on, and still had the ability to attract rising director Matthew Vaughn.

Set in 1962, it follows a young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) who is graduating from University and living with his best friend Raven (Jennifer Lawrence). Xavier is seemingly fascinated with genetic mutation that has given him the gift of reading minds, and given Raven the ability to morph into anyone. Meanwhile, vengeful concentration camp survivor Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) is on a mission to find the fled Nazis that led to the death of his parents, and, ultimately, to find Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who first discovered his gift for magnetism. Shaw is now on a quest to strike a deal with the U.S.S.R. that will lead to the destruction of America. Lensherr realises he must join forces with Xavier and recruit new mutants in order to fight this threat, and eventually being accepted into a discriminative world.

One of the underlying themes of the X-Men films is the idea of discrimination against the mutants. It is the key thing that eventually lead to Xavier and Lensherr (later to become Professor X and Magneto) ultimately becoming enemies. Xavier feels that the best way to show the human population that the mutants do not pose a threat is to rise above the 'racial' hatred. Magneto takes it as a way to feel superior, and therefore hell-bent on teaching the humans a lesson. Magneto feels deeply about this due to his childhood in Auschwitz, and the death of his parents. This deep-rooted hatred is explored early on in First Class as Lensherr scours Europe killing people on his Nazi list.

This is one of the problems with First Class, as the film is bound to the fate that we as the audience already know. Xavier must lose the use of his legs. Magneto and Raven (later to become Mystique) must become evil. Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) must turn into Beast. The Cerebro must be built. Often the film becomes so insistent in developing these ideas that it loses focus on its own storyline and characters. As a result, the plot can often feel muddled, and the new mutant additions are thinly-conveyed and uninteresting.

The one true masterstoke in the film is the casting of Michael Fassbender. I've long been an admirer after seeing him as Bobby Sands in Hunger (2008), and then go on to make Fish Tank (2009) and Inglourious Basterds (also 2009). He portrays Magneto torn both by anger and helplessness devised from his childhood, and plays it with utter conviction. His early scenes travelling across Europe are the best moments in the film, and makes me wish they had gone ahead with their earlier plans in giving Magneto his own origin movie. McAvoy, however, although possessing a lot of charm, suffers from having Patrick Stewart's shoes to fill. His friendship with Raven is just not convincing.

There's a definite feeling that the film has been rushed. Vaughn's earlier efforts in the fantasy field - Kick-Ass (2010) and Stardust (2007) - flowed, and never lacked in the special effects department. Here, the film seems to frantically pacing for the climax, with no real moments of character development, and some of the special effects don't come near to the standards of other films these days. It is, though, undoubtedly enjoyable. The action scenes don't exactly blow anything out of the water, and don't even surpass the original two, but they are at least fun. I hope if they do make another film, they concentrate on the story rather than looking at the future, and set the foundations for what could become a solid franchise in it's own right.


Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne, Kevin Bacon, January Jones, Nicholas Hoult, Oliver Platt, Jason Flemyng
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie