In 2014, director Matthew Vaughn released Kinsman: The Secret Service. The story, based on the comic book Kingsman by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons talks about Eggsy, a young man living in Britain played by Taron Egerton. He discovers that he is part of a secret organization called Kingsman, and shortly thereafter, he starts his training and embarks on a new mission. Back then, this movie was a surprise because everybody was expecting a generic action movie. However, this film honored James Bond movies with a pinch of comedy, a flamboyant story and action scenes well created. This time, the audiences are coming in with high expectations, but the saga is be ruined with the bad sequel brought by the same director.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is about the journey of Eggsy in America after a dangerous new enemy, The Golden Circle, destroys the Kingsman agency. Eggsy discovers an organization called Statesman, the counterpart of Kingsman in the United States. With the performances of great actors like Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Channing Tatum, Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges, and Halley Berry, the sequel is capable of creating good chemistry with the characters, but it fails to try and develop a cohesive story.

The movie has a soft main story and is also plagued with subplots. There is nothing wrong with that, but the problem comes when the movie is more focused on those subplots than on the main plot.

Actually, if you don’t count the first scene of the movie, the main plot isn’t necessarily brought up until about an hour and a half into the film.

We do not see a main conflict in this movie, just small problems that our characters are confronted with, but no actual story development.

Moore, one of the best actresses in the industry right now, plays the role of the villain in the film. She is the leader of The Golden Circle, which also distributes drugs. From one moment to another, she decides to poison people through her drugs.

During the movie we are not sure why she is doing this, there are scenes in which she says she want to legalize drugs, but on some others she just wants fame, but we are not really sure of her purposes. The entire movie she is staying in her fancy island, we never watch an interaction with the heroes, except in three scenes out of the whole film Julianne Moore tries to give the best she can with a bad-written character.

Another problem is the saturated use of Computer Generated Images and Special Effects during the film. Most of the external environments are created by CGI, for example, the Statesman secret base—which are the outskirts of London from the first scene— and the scene in the music festival. It is okay the use of this method but there is a limit. We also have the extreme fights that make the movie look like a fantasy movie more than an actualook the movie not as an action one, but a fantasy. But this is not a problem, because those action scenes are pretty funny. The problem is the excessive use of CGI, getting to the point where it looks like a videogame.

A hit and miss element in this movie are jokes. The movie is very intelligent telling jokes in every scene. It takes the stereotypes of the south of the US and turns it on its head with really good jokes. Most of the them are well portrayed in every scene; the problem arises when there are scenes intended just for the jokes. This is an issue because those scenes do not help to the continuity of the film, for example, all the scenes with Elton John.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is far from being what its predecessor is. The film fulfills its objective of entertaining because it is not a boring movie. Vaughn’s work stays as another action film with ridiculous scenes like Fast & Furious but with a poor story.

Grade: 63/100