1. I understand that we live in a niche world in which certain tiny constituencies can expand their influence and dedication through lower bars of communication, in which fanatics can provide the illusion of greater sway than they have in reality. But you’re not going to convince me that there were enough people clamoring for a Kingsman sequel to require the franchise to produce the bloated, windy, oddly reverential mess that is Kingsman: The Golden Circle. The first film was pleasant enough, a pseudo-Bond semi-parody that got a little lost in its own mythology and wandered perilously into Brit dude-bro territory on occasion but featured a fun lead performance by Colin Firth, an actor it was surprisingly enjoyable to watch wipe out a church full of bad guys to the tune of “Freebird.” It passed by breezily enough and then vanished from memory. But witnessing its sequel, one would think that it was the foundational document of a new religion itself, to be treated with the profundity and self-seriousness of a Dead Sea Scroll. You made a silly little spy thriller. You want us to take this seriously now?
2. We pick up relatively soon after we left off, with Eggsy (Taron Egerton) now a full-fledged Kingsman, dating a Swedish princess (Hanna Alstrom) and looking dapper in his tailored suits. But then, suddenly, his entire Kingsman crew, save for his old buddy Merlin (Mark Strong), is wiped out by missiles fired by a sociopathic drug kingpin (played by Julianne Moore, obviously) who, curiously, wants drugs to be legalized so she can be recognized as the powerful businesswoman she is. Eggsy and Merlin discover a Kingsman doomsday protocol that leads them to Statesman, the Kingsman’s American equivalent, which is run by Jeff Bridges, employs Channing Tatum and Halle Berry and attempts to overcome a dangerous American President (Bruce Greenwood). Oh, also, Firth’s Galahad is back, even though he was shot in the head in the last film. Oh, and there’s another Statesman agent (Pedro Pascal) with a lasso who keeps hanging around, looking shifty. Oh, and Elton John is here too, playing a much more vulgar, acrobatic version of himself.
3. Yeah, there’s a lot going on here; the film is so ridiculously overplotted that it runs nearly two-and-a-half hours, an absurd running time for a goofy movie in which Julianne Moore runs a guy through a meat grinder and then makes a hamburger out of him. Save for a few moments here or there, the cheekiness of the original is replaced with endless plot machinery, with our characters crisscrossing the globe and facing endless unnecessary complications. Director Matthew Vaughn appears to have gotten a bit high off his own supply; he acts as if we ever cared about these characters or what motivated them. He supplies them all with dime-store backstories and then invests way too much time in them—Galahad wanted to study butterflies, Eggsy is afraid to commit to his girlfriend, Merlin loves John Denver songs, continuing Denver’s rather insane resurgence in American movies this year. (By my count, “Take Me Home Country Road” has appeared in this, Logan Lucky, Free Fire, Okja and Alien: Covenant, and I’m not the first to notice.) If you liked the big fight sequences in the first Kingsman movie, you’ll find them here, too. You just have to sit through so much to get to them.