CHICAGO– “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” is a hard “R”-rated sequel with a thoroughly juvenile soul. It pairs silly wordplay, dirty jokes and a startling amount of bloody and gratuitous violence while its tongue remains thoroughly in cheek. This is a James Bond movie as made by an unusually sadistic 16-year-old under the influence of some not entirely legal substances.
 Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
Once upon a time the Coen brothers wood chipper scene in “Fargo” and the brains-in- the-backseat-scene in “Pulp Fiction” tested the limits of acceptability and bad taste, but that seems downright tame compared to all the slicing and dicing in this film. In one instance, there’s a magic lasso which is capable of slicing people in half. Additionally, there are not one, but two scenes of people being fed into meat grinders. They’re both so bonkers they’re actually played for sick laughs.
Director Matthew Vaughn keeps up the same bang/zoom formula from the first film almost immediately when Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is attacked by a former Kingsman turned bad – an ex-recruit with a robotic arm. The ensuing fight and chase in the back of a London cab has all the earmarks of our ADHD-addled computer generated effects sequences, but Vaughn makes it actually fun. Although the scene starts turned up to 11 and keeps building from there, Vaughn doesn’t contact “Michael Bay Disease” and cut the scene into an incomprehensible mess. It’s always clear who’s doing what to whom, and these days that’s a small pleasure that is far less common than it should be.
Continue reading for Spike Walter’s full review of “Kingsman: The Golden Circle”
The Cast of ‘Kingsman: The Golden Circle’
Photo credit: 20th Century Fox
Continue reading for Spike Walter’s full review of “Kingsman: The Golden Circle”
