Presented in seemingly single takes, each brutal fight sequence involves a (presumably VFX-assisted) single camera fluidly whirling, pivoting and crash-zooming through the carnage, usually to an effectively ironic pop-song backing. From an opening black-cab scrap and chase through the streets of London, to the climactic assault on the villains’ secret base (a lost, ancient Cambodian city given a ’50s kitsch Americana renovation), Vaughn keeps things impressively kinetic, gymnastic and focused.
Thankfully, though, that action is bloody terrific. But character definitely takes a back seat to the action in this instalment. The not-so-surprising return of Harry, now one-eyed and amnesiac, at least revives the central relationship albeit in an inverted form, with Eggsy struggling to ease his former mentor back into the spy game. Neither the culture-clash elements - which arise once Eggsy seeks out the brash, honky-tonky Statesmen - nor his attempts to stay faithful to his royal Swedish girlfriend Tilde (a returning Hanna Alström) quite fill that Pygmalion-shaped hole. With that arc complete, Eggsy doesn’t have anywhere so interesting to go in The Golden Circle, in terms of character development at least. There was at its core a smart spin on Pygmalion, with Colin Firth’s starchy superspy Harry tutoring the chavvy Eggsy ( Egerton) in the ways of properly refined espionage. As ultraviolent as the first film, and as ultrasmutty.īut Kingsman wasn’t just about turning up 007 all the way to 11.
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