★★½
Time after time, a sequel fails to match the lightning-in-a-bottle feel of the original.
Whereas Pitch Perfect and Guardians of the Galaxy took people by surprise, their sequels felt slightly fatigued and familiar.
Similarly, Kingsman: The Gold Circle catches the dreaded, unforgiving disease know as sequelitis.
Picking up after the high-octane events of Kingsman: The Secret Service, Eggsy (Taron Egerton) has established himself as THE go-to, swaggering British badass up to the challenge of saving the world.
After being attacked by a familiar foe, the Kingsman are pushed into mega-cartel the Golden Circle’s sights.
Their new adversary, uber-rich drug lord Poppy (Julianne Moore, hamming it up) is not the live-and-let-live type.
This sequel was yet another 2017 blockbuster hindered by a face-palm-inducing marketing campaign.
The trailers went for bigger and bolder, but ended up spoiling many of the movie’s major plot twists.
As revealed prior to the movie’s release, Poppy blasts the other agents into oblivion and leaves Eggsy and tech-genius Merlin (Mark Strong) on their own.
The duo head across the pond and find their red, white and blue cousins under the guise of a Kentucky burbon distillery.
Before this part, however, Kingsman: The Golden Circle had already well-and-truly worn out its welcome.
Director/co-writer Matthew Vaughn makes a laughable number of narrative twists and turns.
The ol’ amnesia plot-line is trotted out to bring fan-favourite Harry Hart (Colin Firth) back from the dead (relax, that twist is also in the trailer), while killing off other main characters without rhyme nor reason.
The Brit, known for everything from Layer Cake to Stardust and Kick-Ass, seems to have run out of ideas by the second installment.
His worst instincts are on display, particularly when the American characters enter the frame.
Whiskey (Narcos and Game of Thrones’ Pedro Pascual), Tequila (Channing Tatum), Champagne (Jeff Bridges) and Ginger Ale (Halle Berry) are mere annoying, paper-thin stereotypes.
Tatum and Bridges were clearly too busy, appearing in the first third before ducking out for extended periods.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle, for all the added flash and pizzazz, is a mere shadow of the original and wasted potential on all accounts (more Die Another Day than Skyfall, if you will).
