Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

 "Well, if you save the world, you knoiw what that means...!"

I rather enjoyed the previous Kingsman movie, a fitrst class rollicking modern action movie which was basically a modern version of James Bond written by Jane Goldman and directed by Matthew Vaughn. I enjoyed this film for exactly the same reasons.

The first film was excellent. This sequel, unusually, maintained exactly the same level of quality, in exactly the same style. It's a blockbuster action film in the James Bond sort of genre, only without the historical weight and constraints on the visual style.

This works. Taron Egerton in=s a splendid lead. Julianne Moore is almost as good a Bond villain as Samuel L. Jackson was. We have a whole new American cast, led by Jeff Bridges, after Kingsman is destroyed, and are introduced to a new American secret socety based in the state of bluegrass and fried chicken, what would be the coolest state in the USA if it were not the fact that it votes for the Republican party, a fascist cult that hates democracy and is rightly despised by all who love freedom, including one hundred percent of the mainstream centre-right, . If you're reading this and you're a Republican, kindly cease doing so. And, indeed.cease reading my blog. You hate freedom and I loathe you as I loathed the USSR. Democracy hates you asv you hate democracy. Death to all you love. Thank you.

I admire the attitude this film takes to the drugs war. Personally, I'm on the fence. Cannabis obviously needs to be legalised, not least so that I can occasionally smoke it (at old-fashionred strength), but heroin? The film, while not telling us what think, addressed the topic thoughtfully, while showing us the cool side of Kentucky at the same time as giving us a US president almost as much as a prick as the criminal Trump. May he die in prison.

Anyway, superb film,.a blockbuster every bitbas good as the original..

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

 "This ain't that kind of movie, bruv."

This, in spite of being from pretty much the same creative team as the rather good Kick-Ass and ultimately, indeed, the creation of Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, is a film I've somehow avoided seeing for seven years. I'm glad thise years are now over; ths doesn't pretend to be anything other than a gloriously violent and stylish blockbuster, but it does this very well indeed, and with a great deal of visual flair.

The premise- a private secret service operated as a second venture of a posh Savile Row tailors- is intriguing although, unlike Eggsy, I'd be inclined to be concerned about the acountability of such a private organisation. I don't think we should read too much into the class subtext as chav Eggsy goes through a rite of passage to become an agent, but it's fun to see him succeed. Colin Firth, too, is superb as his effortlessly awesome mentor, and inevitably there's a cool role for Michael Caine. We also have Mark Hamill playing against type as a British professor, but the most stellar perfrmance by far is that of Samuel L. Jackson, as the Bond villain he was born to play, rather intriguingly pointing out that the Chinese secret service is rather worrying as it has no particular name..

The film works superbly as a straightforward Bond-Style action film, but with the added little touch of lots of nods at the fourth wall, from the verbal sparring between Harry and Valentine on old Bond film tropes to the moment where the latter seems about to tell the former all his plans before putting him in an elaborate death trap, but shoots him instead. 

This film may not have much to say about the world, but it entertained me an awful lot. One of the better class of modern Bond pastiches.