REVIEW: Kingsman: The Golden CircleBy Quinn OxleySeptember 22, 2017Some sequels are incredible. They follow up their predecessors so well that we’re given a new, fresh take on the characters and perhaps introduced to some new friends along the way, but we also come away with a renewed appreciation of the first film. Some sequels even ascend second-tier status and head straight to bearing the mantle of “great movie” on their own merit, and people can appreciate them without even having seen the original.

Yeah, this isn’t one of those sequels.

The Golden Circle picks back up with Eggsy (Taron Egerton, AKA perfection, not biased) as he attempts to balance life as a Kingsman with life as the SO of a Swedish princess (yeah, the one who was in all of five minutes of The Secret Service). After the execution of virtually every Kingsman, Eggsy and Merlin (Mark Strong) must reach out to their American cousin-agency, Statesman, and connect the dots which compose the Golden Circle.

The follow-up contains some of the signature cartoonish charm of The Secret Service, complete with epic one-shot fight sequences and stylized, comic-bookish violence. Also complete with Taron Egerton’s perfection (not biased) and Colin Firth’s perfection (not biased), with the added variable of Channing Tatum’s perfection (not biased).

However, The Golden Circle is just similar enough to be called a loose rehash of the original, and just different enough not to have captured the full Kingsman glory. There’s a fundamental draw that simply isn’t there anymore. It may have something to do with the underdeveloped Poppy (Julianne Moore), or the contrived romance between Eggsy and Princess Tilde, or the omission of Colin Firth’s proper Harry from much of the film, or the incredibly strange, pivotal Elton John “cameo.” There’s just something not right about the direction they took this film.

It’s still decent fun; it’s not awful. It’s just not what it could have been, and that hurts my heart, because The Secret Service was so grand.

But I got to see Taron Egerton in a suit for two and a half hours, so you won’t see me asking for my money back (not biased).

Rating: 4.5/10

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