Kingsman: The Golden Circle

It slows the pace less and picks up the pace more to the highest revs and cadence of insane, amazing, terrifying, or just perfectly effective ideas, never stopping for a moment. The boundless adoration of the first part does not apply to me, but I enjoyed it tremendously; maybe that's why I can now build Kingsman: The Golden Circle right next to it. Taron Egerton has also matured as an actor and almost doesn't lag at all behind Mark Strong or even Colin Firth. Again, the oddity and disturbing madness of the villain's Bond-like plan bothers me. Several times I even thought it was rising to almost miraculous places before the blue haze painfully brought me back down to earth. (2017-09-21)

I already had problems with the first Kingsman (I thought it was teenage nonsense that doesn’t know the limits of good taste), so it’s no surprise that the sequel didn’t pull me into the cinemas. Actually, I should rate it lower than I am, because it’s clearly weaker than the previous one. But I really don’t give a toss. The Golden Circle is such an uninteresting film that it didn’t even manage to piss me off. Sad. For a moment, I also wanted to complain about how weirdly and poorly the antagonist is drawn, but then I realised that I don’t remember even who was the villain in the first one (and I still can’t recall it!). But I will remember Julianne Moore, so I’ll leave my complaints for another time. :D (2017-09-21)

I still like it, but it finally gets going somewhere in the middle (not even thanks to the action scene), then it trots elegantly to the inevitable conclusion. It's still true that Vaughn can serve action on a silver platter without seams, but it's a pity that his provocations no longer have such balls. Only Elton John, who thoroughly did a lot of coke and is fighting for his life, but it’s still not as good as Kingsman: The Secret Service... (2017-12-18)

Kingsman is one of my favourite movies ever, but the sequel is a disappointment. Usually with sequels they add more of everything that was good in the first one, here it's the opposite. There's less action, blood, humour, and the pacing has slowed down, which were the four basic elements that the first one had. The film starts with an excellent car chase and then we wait an hour and a half for an action scene, which is a hell of a long time. I liked the action scene in the bar, which recalls the first episode, and then the half hour finale, which has a decent pace and fixes the impression of the previous hour, but lacks something that would be equal, for example, the church scene from the first one. I loved Pedro Pascal, he steals all the action for himself with Las, Halle Berry is also nice and the character of the president is awesome. I didn’t like the uninteresting Julianne Moore, who was absolutely not suitable for villain, she is not Samuel L. Jackson, but then I don't trust female villains too much, and her robot dogs seemed a bit too much for me. Overall, still over the top and stylish fun with very creative and modern direction by Matthew Vaughn, but it didn't have enough ideas to match the first one in my opinion anymore. I'd love to see a spin off with the Statesmen. 75%. (2017-09-21)

I like the first Kingsman, I like Matthew Vaughn, I like movies that aren't afraid to go their own way and have fun with an extremely violent scene in which Colin Firth dispatches a church full of religious fanatics. The director of this action flick hasn't given me any reason to doubt his abilities so far, so I was looking forward to the second installment, but alas, this time Vaughn stumbled. Or rather, it looks like he doesn't care where he steps. The Golden Circle is almost two and a half hours long, has about three action set-pieces (one great, one decent, and one pointless), but completely disappoints in its handling of the new characters. The Statesmen don't impress much, the main villain and her devious plan are quite a sad sight to behold, and it all lacks the lightness, wit and quirkiness of the first film. This one managed to be cool and engaging in every other scene. It's awful to see them trying to do the same thing this time around, and it rarely works. Otherwise, it's mostly talk, everyone is serious, and as the minutes go by it becomes more and more clear that this sequel doesn't really have much to offer. Just Vaughn's lucid action, a good Taron Egerton and an excellent Firth. You know that feeling when you have to make tea out of a used bag? That's it. It's still got some flavour, but it was better in every way last time. And if you had to make it a third time, you might want to give it a miss... (2018-07-27)