Director: Matthew Vaughn
Writers: Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn
Stars: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Mark Strong
Plot: When their headquarters are destroyed and the world is held hostage, the Kingsman’s journey leads them to the discovery of an allied spy organisation in the United States. These two elite secret organisations must band together to defeat a common enemy.
Running Time: 2 Hours 21 Minutes
Rotten Tomatoes Score: Critics 53% Audience 65%
Why I Watched It: Saw the first one and it was on for 2.99 on itunes so not my fault.
Random Thoughts: Matthew Vaughn is not one of my favourite directors,I know a lot of people love him and a ton of fanboys adore him cause he makes “movies” he doesn’t tell stories but makes high energy, highly stylised over the top movies and for me he’s a tad too much, all style really no real characters and no stakes, look he killed off Colin Firth in the first film and now he’s back.
What I Liked: The style is cool not going to lie, it’s loud and does provide the over the top action you would expect and yes it’s a sequel so it’s more of everything. I might not be a huge fan of Vaugh’s but he does deliver on what he does best, be does do what it says on the label but I fear he does come close to being the British Michael Bay. He is loud for the sake of being loud and he pushes the limits just to see how far he can go it’s not in service of the characters or the story.
The sound design is great, the stunts are cool and all the actors are game and I will say most of them are engaged.
What I Didn’t Like: To put it very simple this is a bloated and very self indulgent movie, too many name actors with very little to do and for the love of film why is this film over 2 hours and 20 minutes, there’s not that much story to tell and boy does it drag and near the end you feel those extra minutes.
The story is about as cliched as you can get think a James Bond movie from the early 80′s, the villain here is played by Julianne Moore and yes she’s over the top and is fun at points but she’s not fleshed out at all and she has a diner where she kills people with a meat grinder, yes you read that right. This film wants to be cheesy B-Movie fun but there’s too much money on the screen and the actors are way too good, wasted but still too good for it to work.
Also this film does through some very heavy handed social commentary that just seems out of place, this fill has a scene where our hero puts a tracking device inside a women, I don’t think I want to explain further. So trying to be political just seems silly. At the end of the day this film is just there, you could argue we needed a sequel but we got one and I wish they put some effort into the story and actually gave these very good actors something to do and yes Elton John plays himself, kind of sums up what this movie was going for.
Final Thoughts: Mindless, big budget popcorn movie if that’s what you’re looking for then that’s what you’ll get but it’s not a good or even fun popcorn movie.
Rating: 3/10
Movie Burner Entertainment 