'Kingsman' Sequel: This Time, A Flat 'Golden Circle'
The new chapter in the spy franchise ramps up the first film's caustic, violent cynicism but leans even harder into the artifice; a reliance on soundstages and CGI dampens the excitement and energy.
You might have to go all the way back to RoboCop — the 1987 Paul Verhoeven one that got resubmitted to the MPAA a double-digit number of times before its comically grisly violence was deemed tame enough to warrant a mere R-rating— to find a trigger-happy popcorn flick as deeply cynical as the two Kingsman super-spy adventures, the second of which is subtitled The Golden Circle.
Freely adapted from a comic book limited series by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons (and Matthew Vaughn, who was credited on the comics before he co-wrote and directed both movies) 2015's and its new sequel reflect the surreal tastes of Vaughn and his longtime if 'Enry 'Iggins had been training Eliza Doolittle for a covert infiltration of the plains of Spain.
