Butler's Cinema Scene

Colin Firth, Taron Egerton

“KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE” My rating: B- 

141 minutes | MPAA rating: R

For a movie that isn’t actually about anything, “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” is ridiculously diverting.

Those who saw the original “Kingsman: The Secret Service” a few years back will be treated to more of the same, only on steroids.  This sequel is bigger, faster, noisier and funnier than the original.

Plus, this time around writer/director Matthew Vaughn shows a surer hand at balancing the movie’s over-the-top violence with a refined comic sensibility.

Things begin with our hero Eggsy (Taron Egerton) trying to juggle his duties as a member of the super-secret Kingsman security apparatus against his romance with Tilde (Hanna Alström), an honest-to-God Swedish princess.  For a former car thief with a taste for a white rapper wardrobe (sweats, ball caps), Eggsy has come a long way in a brief time.

But it all comes crashing down when the entire Kingsman operation is destroyed in one fell swoop.  The only survivors are Eggsy (who was having dinner with the King of Sweden when it all happened) and the bald, tech-savvy Merlin (Mark Strong).

What happened? Well, an international drug lord named Poppy (Julianne Moore) and her Golden Circle gang are clearing the deck prior to a big push for world domination.  A nostalgia freak, Poppy lives in seclusion in the Cambodian jungle in her own private theme park…imagine Disneyland’s Main Street U.S.A. redone with a “Happy Days” theme.

She’s even kidnapped Elton John (playing himself) so that he can perform her favorite hits at will. (This year’s best bit of celebrity casting.)

Seeking allies, Eggsy and Merlin travel to Kentucky where they encounter the Statesmen, their Yank counterparts, a band of American free agents posing as a distilling concern.  These cowboys — literally…we’re talking Stetsons, boots and electric bullwhips capable of slicing steel — have names like Champagne (Jeff Bridges), Tequila (Channing Tatum), Whiskey (Pedro Pascal) and Ginger (Halle Berry).

Oh yes…the Statesmen have been providing shelter to an amnesiac who has suffered a rather nasty bullet wound in the noggin.  He is, of course, Harry Hart aka Galahad (Colin Firth), Eggsy’s mentor and a fatality (or so we thought) in the first film. (I’m not giving anything away here…Firth is all over the ads.)

Julianne Moore

Well, our hero will need all the help he can get, because Poppy has an insidious plan. Having seized control of the world’s illicit drug trade, she’s dusted her product with a slow-working poison. Anyone who partakes of weed, ecstasy, heroin or cocaine will start turning blue, go manic, seize up and eventually die horribly.

She’s blackmailing world governments for the antidote. The U.S. Prez (Bruce Greenwood) promises to negotiate with Poppy but he has no intention of rolling over for her.  He wants all of America’s drug users to die. Figures it will look good on his resume. (This is about as close as “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” comes to making a genuine sociopolitical point.)

Every 10 minutes or so Vaughn and company stage another action sequence dishing impossible stunts, hilariously impossible weaponry (a briefcase that contains not only a machine-gun with an inexhaustible supply of ammo but also unfolds to form a bullet-proof shield), and slow-motion segments that allow us to relish the gravity-defying mayhem. And of course all this action is choreographed to a hummable pop tune library.

The players approach their outlandish roles with tongue-in-cheek drollery, though several (Bridges, Channing, Berry) really aren’t given much to do.

Perhaps the most telling thing about “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” is that it runs for an absurd 2 1/2 hours (this isn’t “Lawrence of Arabia,” after all) but doesn’t feel nearly that long.

| Robert W. Butler