In 2015, director Matthew Vaughn made the first Kingsman film: it was gloriously unapologetic in the irreverence of its own subversiveness. It knows, as Vaughn does, exactly which elements it’s sending up. So much so that there’s even a scene in the original between Colin Firth’s dapper gentlemen spy and Samuel L. Jackman’s lisping, baseball-capped megalomaniac, where they discuss the many iterations of the spy genre itself. ‘Nowadays they’re all a little serious for my taste…give me a far-fetched theatrical plot any day’.
Now, all the on-the-button self-referentiality coupled with a knowingly nostalgic whip-smart screenplay gets a sequel.
The second chapter in a proposed trilogy, is even more over-the-top, flashier, brasher, and gratuitous than the first one. The only element that’s given a comic-book tone-down this time, is the speed-ramped violence: there’s no equivalent of the infamous church massacre from the original.
We’re back in spy extravagance from the opening scene: an spectacularly staged sequence in a London taxi.
Eggsy, our charismatic young spy, must tackle everything from deadly bionic arms, to American rivals and lethal cable-cars, all with sharp orange tuxedos, acerbic one-liners and its tongue firmly inside its cheek.
Taron Egerton as Eggsy, is so confident and funny delivering all of the above, that he really could be a Bond of the future, effortlessly having much more personality than Daniel Craig. These movies wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining without him at the centre.
Starry new recruits are given nothing to do: Halle Berry and Jeff Bridges are both frustratingly stuck behind desks. While this film definitely works significantly less well than the original in terms of sheer surprise, shock or invention - it has an even better villain - another terrific performance from Julianne Moore as Poppy, the deceptively sunny proprietor of a fifties-style diner with a ruthlessness behind her veneers. In her words: ‘Kingsman is crumpets!’. Why ruin it with a gimmicky cameo from Elton John, and lewdness which makes it impossible to determine who it’s aimed at. It’s far too jammed with expletives for younger children, and also too much off an obviously mainstream comic-book spectacular to appeal to more mature adults. Not as streamlined, self-referential or as strikingly original as the first one. Can’t wait for the next two though!
Rating: * * * *
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