My Review of 'Kingsman: The Golden Circle'

Kingsman: The Secret Service ended on a high note, and it really seemed like that should have been the end of the movie. I didn't actually think that they'd pull off a sequel to the movie. A few years later, Kingsman: The Golden Circle popped up.

I have to admit, when the trailers first came out for Kingsman: The Golden Circle I was really excited. They recaptured the fun and excitement of the original movie in the trailer; however they had the part where Harry comes back from the dead, which had me totally confused. He was shot dead in the first movie—how the heck did he come back to life? Then I noticed all the star cameos in the sequel. I started to think that it was going to be a cash grab.

I didn't get to see the movie until well after its release date. I'm kind of happy I waited so long because I don't feel it's as good as the first one.

In the sequel Eggsy is living large with his great job and beautiful royal girlfriend, and he still gets to hang out with his clueless friends. Everything is absolutely great for Eggsy until one of the failed Kingsman trainees goes on a rampage and joins this secret organization called the Golden Circle, hence the title of the movie.

The Golden Circle is hellbent on global domination, and will eliminate anyone in their path. One of their greatest obstacles so happens to be the Kingsman organization. So they infiltrate the Kingsman databases and essentially wipe everyone out except for a select few. Eggsy conveniently escapes the Golden Circle's path of destruction. Now it's up to Eggsy to figure out a way to infiltrate the Golden Circle's organization and build back the Kingsman organization.

There are a ton of plot holes in this movie but it is still able to capture the frantic action that made the first Kingsman so great. The problem is that we've seen this action before in the first movie so some of the action sequences seem like a rehash of the first movie. They even make nods to the first movie a number of times. I guess that's our fault as moviegoers. We all support sequels no matter how bad they are depending on how good the previous movie was.

I mentioned that it's been a few years since the first movie came out and yet it doesn't seem as though the special effects had gotten any better. Some of the special effects are done nicely, but it's kind of half and half. Half of the time I get distracted at how obviously they used CGI to make a scene. It's almost cartoon like but then that sort of fits with the outlandish action sequences that they have in the movie.

One of the weirdest and surprising cameo's that I mentioned earlier was Elton John! I thought it was crazy how they actually got Elton John to play as himself in the film. He steals a few scenes with his outlandish behavior. I think he may have agreed to playing in the movie because Taron Egerton, who plays Eggsy, would later play as Elton John in his biopic Rocketman. Or maybe I'm overthinking this thing and it was just a weird coincidence that I noticed, now that I watched this movie so late.

Although there are a lot of cameos by a bunch of stars, they don't have very big roles and really it's based on the core players from the first movie. That was nice but they didn't really need the extra stars except to draw more people into the theaters to watch the movie.

I sort of wonder what this movie would have been like if I had watched it in 3D in the theaters. I'm sure that a lot of the special effects and fight sequences would have benefited from the 3D novelty.

Besides this movie really feels like a prepubescent boy had wrote and directed it. It's like a video game that goes from level to level with tons of action sequences and convenient plot devices to get the main characters out of sticky situations.

Overall, I would still say that this movie is enjoyable but only if you had watched the first Kingsman movie. If you haven't seen the first Kingsman movie, then this will be an absolute nightmare for you to slog through. Despite all of the negatives that I described earlier, it's still fun for those that had fond memories of the original. For those that have watched the first Kingsman movie I would give this movie a 7 out of 10. Those that weren't lucky enough to watch the first movie should definitely check out the first one before watching this. If you do watch this without watching the first I would say it would be a 3 out of 10 for you guys.