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OT: Kingsmen 2: The Golden Circle (MODERATE SPOILERS)

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
17 replies | jump to latest

Umm...how about "R-rated and ridiculous."

But I kinda liked it.

First, a confrontation with myself. I saw Kingsmen 1(so to speak) in February of 2015. That's not that long ago. I thought I remembered key parts of it, I did NOT remember how a key character got killed. Totally gone from my memory. Its a bit scary, a touch of the older age coming for me, even as I seem to retain the necessary facts of working life. Its like my brain is tossing out memories I don't need.

Anyway, so MANY plot points in Kingsman 1 in Kingsmen 2 that I was aghast at how little I remembered. Thankfully, they gave us a flashback to how that major character got killed and I was like: "Oh, yeah, that's it."

I struggled a bit with the memory thing, recalled what I could, and decided that it didn't really matter with THIS thing. Just go with the flow.

I came to Kingsmen 2 because I do remember liking the first one, I do like action films, and I was intrigued at the "names" pulled into this sequel(all American) to make it one of the "starriest movies" of the year.

I still dig all-star casts.

And three of the new stars added to the Kingsmen franchise are Oscar winners: Jeff Bridges(Best Actor), Julianne Moore(Best Actress), Halle Berry(Best Actress.) I thought: THESE roles in THIS movie are worthless, but they all probably got paid big bucks, because they are Oscar winners. And BECAUSE they are Oscar winners(but also for other reasons), they ARE names. Dare I note that Bridges and Moore won their Oscars for movies nobody saw? Oh, well, their stardom comes from elsewhere(True Grit, Boogie Nights.)

Also added is a "new male star almost a new male superstar": Channing Tatum, the muscular and hunky star of "Magic Mike" and "Logan Lucky" whose face signals a certain dumbness that is nicely undercut by surprise reserves of intelligence and charm. Tatum could be our first "dumb blonde male movie star" -- except he's a brunette.

Another Oscar winner returns -- Colin Firth, whose face for his entire career has projected a kind of sad, kind decency -- which is only getting sadder and kinder as he ages. (Though his Kingsman spy is a badass killer.)

That's FOUR Oscar winners in this thing! Overload. Plus the young man who is the real lead(I haven't learned his name), plus a fine British actor(here playing Scottish) named Mark Strong, who is the Kingsmen's tech support and brain, also returning. Strong looks to me like Stanley Tucci on steroids.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Some ruminations on the stars in Kingsmen 2:

Jeff Bridges. I am now secure in my belief that as Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones age out of their ability to offer "grizzled white guy support" to movies, Jeff Bridges and Kurt Russell(now in their late sixties) are moving into those slots. Bridges is marginally a bigger star name than Russell, but both men have decades of movies behind them, both men started as CHILD stars, for God's sake, I myself have grown up with them, from Follow Me Boys to The Last Picture Show to The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes to Thunderbolt and Lightfoot to King Kong to Used Cars to Escape From New York...and on and on.

Bridges appears in Kingsmen 2 as the drawlin' good ol' boy (Agent Champagne) who runs "Statesmen," the All-American compliment to the British "Kingsmen," superspy agencies both. Bridges has very few scenes, but his level of stardom is like, required, to give the Statesmen the property gravitas to match Kingsmen(it was Michael Caine in Kingsmen, rather a Jeff Bridges level star himself.)

Channing Tatum (Agent Tequila, starting to see a pattern?) is ALMOST the top American spy in Bridges' stable, but we learn there is one more highly ranked. He is called Agent Whiskey and played by a much lesser known actor named Pedro Pascal and soon we find out why: star names Bridges and Tatum are CAMEOS meant to launch the story, but Pascal "goes the distance" as one of the real leads of the picture, joining the main young British star as a team. I assume that allows for Bridges and Tatum to be hired at lower "cameo" rates.

The female "guest stars" get more to do: Halle Berry is the bookish Statesmen tech support equivalent to Mark Strong's Merlin, and helps him save the technical day.

And then there's Julianne Moore...the arch villain of the piece. The, er....Psycho. (A connection, albeit weak.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I'd say I've had a love-hate relationship with Julianne Moore for much of her career. She kind of puts on airs, and there is footage of her working on Van Sant's Psycho(in the role of Lila) where Moore says things like:

"I have no role to play, here!"

and (being directed to open drawers in sister Marion's Cabin One) "Why am I opening these drawers? What am I looking for? What is my motivation?"

She treats the whole thing with contempt, though I understand she was paid well for Van Sant's Psycho. Worse, Moore auditioned to play MARION, and I think she would have made a better Marion than Anne Heche did.

And that's because of "Boogie Nights"(release the year before Van Sant's Psycho) where Moore gave us a fearless portrayal of an aging, drugged out Porn Queen with plenty of sex and plenty of pathos. THAT would have powered a 1998 Marion Crane pretty well.

Anyway, I've never known quite how to take Julianne Moore. She does this "dumb vacant smile" thing in too many movies(like the upcoming Suburbicon.) She failed in "normal roles"(The Lost World; some romcom about lawyers with Pierce Brosnan.) And yet...she's got something.

And it is there in Kingsmen 2. She's playing a Cartoon Character of a villain -- Poppy Adams, or "Poppy" for short -- who has recreated a 1950's theme park ("Poppy Land") in the middle of the Cambodian jungle while adopting a "June Cleaver" wardrobe and a pie-baking sweetie-pie attitude. But we learn quickly that Poppy Adams is the richest drug cartel owner in the world and totally ruthless. A cable news psychiatrist reels off her attributes and says they are "a perfect resume for a corporate CEO...or a psychopath." And well, she's more of a psychopath, forcing a new henchman hire to jam another henchman into a meat grinder, producing a hamburger from the victim, and forcing his killer to eat it.

That's the kind of movie "Kingsmen 2" is. But kinda silly to match the psychopathy: how does Moore have the power to make henchmen kill and eat each other? "Killer robot dogs" who protect Moore and kill all comers. Those killer robot dogs rather remove Kingsmen from Bourne territory and take it to Harryhausen Land.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

But wait, there's more: Poppy has kidnapped her favorite pop star -- Elton John, as himself -- and is holding him prisoner to play her favorite songs (in a "Poppy Theater") while she decides what to do with him. All of this allows for the best thing in "Kingsmen 2" a final ultra-violent fist, gun and knife battle scored to "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" an instant memory of seventies fun and frolic to my ears.

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I linger on all the stars in Kingsmen 2, and all the ridiculous things that happen in it to say -- well, I kinda liked it even as I was shaking my head at it. The spy plot is at once, flat out ridiculous and silly and yet -- terribly gory and serious. I mean, men fed into meat grinders and eaten(shades of Sweeney Todd) and Poppy ultimately holding every "drug-taking human" in the world hostage(through tainted drugs for which only she has the antidote.) The film makes the dire point that there are a lot more people taking drugs in the world than you would know -- some very sympathetic charcters start to show the symptoms of Poppy's tainted drugs and WE realize: it could any of us, all of us.

There's also a sexual charge to "Kingsmen 2." Recall that a kidnapped Swedish Royal Princess promised our young hero the ultimate taboo -- sex in a certain part of her body-- in Kingsmen 1 if he saved the world. That plot point returns. With something new: young hero's need to seduce another woman using a certain part of HER body -- to complete his spy mission. Its a bit graphic what he has to do, but he does it without betraying his Swedish princess.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

So: ultra-violence and naughty sex and a full roster of Oscar winning guest stars, and impeccable British spies in suits and chaw-chewin American agents in jeans and cowboy boots and...well, no more to say on this one. I have seen reviews from one star to four stars on this movie and I think both reviews are right.

Ultimately it is all that star charisma -- and Elton John's "Saturday Nights' Alright for Fightin' -- that gave me my money's worth on Kingsmen 2. And Julianne Moore somehow shone for me -- she's smiling evil in this one, a true Hitchcock villain.

And who knows, if it does well, maybe we'll get a "Statesmen" movie with Jeff Bridges and Channing Tatum showing up for the whole thing...

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

Wow, detailed review! The Original hasn't really stuck with me except for the things that really irritated me: the smutty end joke (I've since seen *two* different Italian exploitation films in different sub-genres from the '70s which have exactly the same ending so the gag's not even original) and the absurd 'shooting down an orbiting satellite' plot-point: to be in orbit something has to be traveling sideways at well over 10,000 mph (= more than 3 miles per sec) so a stationary shooter can hardly even see it go by - satellite are typically smaller than small planes so by the time you see it and try to aim and shoot it's past you - let alone catch up to it with a shoulder-launched missile that travels at less than 1000 mph.

The guy you mention, Pedro Pascal, who's the new star stateside in the film made a big impact on Game of Thrones....he was v. sexy and winning for a whole season and then died one of the most gruesome deaths (right after monologuing most impressively) - you probably saw this famous season-ending scene at the time (it got lots of reaction videos, probably second only to the Red Wedding massacre).

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Wow, detailed review!

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Perhaps ridiculously so for what is a pretty disposable movie, but since I really haven't the background or analytical equipment to discuss the more prestigious/artistic films out there, I rather have fun dissecting what movies I CAN talk about.

The key to Kingsmen 2 I think, is this: its a "bad movie" that has four Oscar winners(all in the Actor/Actress category), one musical superstar(Elton John), one new star aborning "known"(Channing Tatum) and evidently one new star aborning "unknown" (Pedro Pascal -- unknown only to me, who is out of the Game of Thrones loop.)

Thus Kingsmen 2 becomes a bit fascinating as a "all-star vehicle" which any number of stars felt was worth their time and pay. (Hey: I've read that in recent years, financially over-strapped stars NEED big paychecks when they can get them; they've got mansions to feed and "prestige indies" can't pay those bills. Its why Julianne Moore did "Psycho" years ago.)

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The Original hasn't really stuck with me except for the things that really irritated me: the smutty end joke (I've since seen *two* different Italian exploitation films in different sub-genres from the '70s which have exactly the same ending so the gag's not even original)

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Says you! Who else around here would have that depth of knowledge? That said, perhaps the writer of the original Kingsmen (Kingsman?) saw them.

That sexual joke(and the nudity accompanying it) had a way of mixing with the vicious ultraviolence in the original to say: "this is a politically incorrect film" and perhaps made a name for the movie accordingly. It isn't really a topic for mixed company but...its the lady who raises the potential...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

and the absurd 'shooting down an orbiting satellite' plot-point: to be in orbit something has to be traveling sideways at well over 10,000 mph (= more than 3 miles per sec) so a stationary shooter can hardly even see it go by - satellite are typically smaller than small planes so by the time you see it and try to aim and shoot it's past you - let alone catch up to it with a shoulder-launched missile that travels at less than 1000 mph.

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Yes, but these are two movies in which the "plot" has a certain "fantasy element" to begin with -- rigging literally millions of people to die or kill each other. Logic simply doesn't exist here. Which is perhaps why movies of this ilk aren't worth everyone's time.

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The guy you mention, Pedro Pascal, who's the new star stateside in the film made a big impact on Game of Thrones....he was v. sexy and winning for a whole season and then died one of the most gruesome deaths (right after monologuing most impressively) - you probably saw this famous season-ending scene at the time (it got lots of reaction videos, probably second only to the Red Wedding massacre).

I"ve watched as Game of Thrones has taken on both "must see TV" status and a sort of "Star Wars/LOTR" cult status and I feel sadly out of the game here. I've not much ability to catch up on it; but I've seen clips of the ultra-violent scenes(though not Pascal's yet) and the Red Wedding massacre in particular. (Interesting: I saw a GOT clip of one man killing another by ramming his thumbs into the man's eyes; and recently saw an old Deadwood where a man killed another by thumbing an eyeball out of a socket. Is this an HBO affectation?)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

---What this tells me, BTW, is that Pedro Pascal IS one of the all stars in "Kingsmen 2" and hardly unknown at all. I found his face reminiscent of Matthew McConaghey in some shots, accentuated because they've given him a twangin' Texas accent (and a Wonder Woman lasso that cuts people in half!)

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I'll probably forget Kingsmen 2 as I forgot Kingsmen 1, but honestly: Firth, Bridges, Moore, Berry, and Tatum. And Pascal. That's a lot of talent, and with some of them a lot of years of movie history(Bridges goes back to the 60s.) Of the group, Moore wins for wacked-out villainy(some critic wrote that she offers a Megan Mullahey impression) and Bridges has "gravitas."

Note in passing: much has been made that Jeff Bridges ---he of the Lebowksi/True Grit beard -- is clean shaven in Kingsmen 2, but he's not, really. Close ups show that he is wearing a trace of a moustache. Its odd looking, as if Bridges couldn't quite "clean all the way up" for the role.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

(Interesting: I saw a GOT clip of one man killing another by ramming his thumbs into the man's eyes

Those are Pedro Pascal's character's eyes and then skull getting squished!

On Julianne Moore: she's great with characters who are uncomfortable with their lives, who are very aware of themselves as playing roles. Since that's essentially everyone in Todd Haynes' movies, she's great for Haynes in things like Safe (1995) and Far From Heaven (2003) [laying the groundwork for Mad Men]. She's also good with directors from Altman to PTA to the Coens who really like their characters to be quirky. Note that saying this comes awfully close to saying that Moore is great with great, very-actor-friendly directors (which invites the response from actors everywhere - 'Sheesh, isn't everybody!'). Where she comes a cropper is when she's plugged into some more generic or even (as in Children of Men) just less actor-focused vision. Unlike, say, Phil Seymour Hoffman or Sam Jackson or Kidman or Blanchett (the sorts of actors who are Moore's real peers), Moore doesn't/can't *lift* mediocre or somewhat actor-indifferent material.

Anyhow, for me, Moore's place in cinema history is secure with Short Cuts (nobody ever forgets her big scene with Matthew Modine in this!), Vanya on 42nd St, Safe, Boogie Nights, Lebowski, End of the Affair, Magnolia (although Moore's character is the weak link in the film as far as I am concerned), Far From Heaven, Children Of Men (I have my doubts about her here too but it's still, I say, the best film of 2006 so how bad can she be?), I'm Not There, A Single Man, The Kids Are Alright, Game Change (great as phoney-baloney Sarah Palin!). That's a Baker's Dozen of near pure movie goodness that stacks up with almost anyone's (including those I listed as Moore's peers).

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Those are Pedro Pascal's character's eyes and then skull getting squished!

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Well, whaddya know? That was a coupla years ago, yes? Took him awhile to reach Kingsmen 2...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

On Julianne Moore: she's great with characters who are uncomfortable with their lives, who are very aware of themselves as playing roles. Since that's essentially everyone in Todd Haynes' movies, she's great for Haynes in things like Safe (1995) and Far From Heaven (2003) [laying the groundwork for Mad Men].

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I saw both Safe and Far From Heaven...I will here again note that years ago I saw a LOT more indiefilm, for various reasons, and Moore was good in those to be sure. And I liked Far From Heaven exactly for its tie-in to that NYC-commuter town nostalgia that Mad Men would find (and that I found in even a 1962 piffle like "Boys Night Out.")

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In fact, I've seen a lot of Julianne Moore films, come to think of it. She's worked steadily since at least 1990, and seems to have rigged up one of those careers with "an indie here, a big budget one there" to stay in the game.

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She's also good with directors from Altman to PTA to the Coens who really like their characters to be quirky.

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That weird, affected accent she did in Lebowski(with Jeff Bridges...hey there, Kingsmen..they don't share a scene in the new film, however)...I'm not sure I liked it.

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Note that saying this comes awfully close to saying that Moore is great with great, very-actor-friendly directors (which invites the response from actors everywhere - 'Sheesh, isn't everybody!'). Where she comes a cropper is when she's plugged into some more generic or even (as in Children of Men) just less actor-focused vision. Unlike, say, Phil Seymour Hoffman or Sam Jackson or Kidman or Blanchett (the sorts of actors who are Moore's real peers),

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I thought I saw a lot of Moore films but...you saw more. More Moore.

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Moore doesn't/can't *lift* mediocre or somewhat actor-indifferent material.

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Yes. I recall her just fitting not at all into a lawyers romcom with Pierce Brosnan. Its like he could do Rock Hudson, but she couldn't do Doris Day. Let's face it...doing Doris Day is hard.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Anyhow, for me, Moore's place in cinema history is secure with Short Cuts (nobody ever forgets her big scene with Matthew Modine in this!), Vanya on 42nd St, Safe, Boogie Nights, Lebowski, End of the Affair, Magnolia (although Moore's character is the weak link in the film as far as I am concerned), Far From Heaven, Children Of Men (I have my doubts about her here too but it's still, I say, the best film of 2006 so how bad can she be?), I'm Not There, A Single Man, The Kids Are Alright, Game Change (great as phoney-baloney Sarah Palin!). That's a Baker's Dozen of near pure movie goodness that stacks up with almost anyone's (including those I listed as Moore's peers).

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Moviechat is cutting down my word count. Seems to happen down-thread.

That's quite a list of films, and I've seen many of them.

I think the two where Julianne Moore "bugged me" the most were Magnolia(where even if her character's grief and rage is understandable, she starts at 11 and never goes down; its a "nails on chalkboard" performance) and, of all things, Psycho, where Moore's probable disgust with the "nothing" role of Lila(she was wrong) pushes her to convert Lila into such a raging shrew that I was scared for MRS. BATES when Lila entered the house.

As for the Sarah Palin thing, this: we have plenty of women in political office worldwide, but it seems that US politics calls for such a phony affectation(giving us the feeling that they are ALL phonies) that the entry of women into this con MAN's field makes almost all of them seem worse than the average woman. So I guess I'm bi-partisan on this one. Still, female politicians win a lot, they have won a lot, they will win a lot and so...we better be used to them by now.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Back to Moore: you know, its Vanya on 42nd Street I recall reading a lot about in her career. I should see it someday. And what WAS the name of the movie she won the Oscar for? Oh, Short Cuts. What a scene. The bravura of exactly what Moore showed, and how she showed it(and Modine's utter disregard for it; THAT was part of the fun, too.)

And this: Given that long list of serious acheivements, Moore's work as Poppy in Kingsmen 2 is all the more bizarre and funny. Moore doesn't feel like she is slumming; she gives Poppy the nuance of a ruthless psychopath out to re-create herself in 50's housewife terms; her good and bad sides war within her like Norman Bates. And as with all evil villains...she gets it good.

But some of her lines are SO stupid that one just shakes one's head and thinks "Julianne, I hope this was 10 million dollars for ten days work. It had to be."

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

And what WAS the name of the movie she won the Oscar for?

Stil Alice (2014) - an Alzheimer's movie. I haven't seen it - reviews were tepid aside from the narrow question of Moore's performance. My Left Foot or Wit it's not.

Vanya on 42 St is directed by Louis Malle and reunites him with Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn...so it *feels* a lot like a sequel to My Dinner With Andre (1981) (which concerned theories of the theater for about half its running time). Moore is at the peak of her physical beauty and kind of sweeps in half way through the film to play somone who's playing the sophisticated, urbane beauty, Yelena, in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (whom none of the villagers in the play understand). It's a very actory double role that fits Moore's talents like a glove. Von42 isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea though, anymore than MDWA was.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

and the absurd 'shooting down an orbiting satellite' plot-point:
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Yes, but these are two movies in which the "plot" has a certain "fantasy element"

I just watched the first ep. of a widely-praised new Star Trek series on Netflix - Star Trek:Discovery. Its central plot point is that some new religious/military sect of the Klingons sets alight a new star (to fulfil some prophecy it seems) to act as a beacon that'll instantly be seen by every Klingon in the galaxy. That happens and within literally a matter of minutes dozens or even hundreds of Klingon warship arrive out of warp/hyperspace. [End of ep.]

In the meantime we hear from Sarek a Vulcan who's thousands of light years away that he can already *see* the new star/beacon in the sky (he counsels that this means trouble etc.).

I'm prepared to cut sci-fi on TV and in movies considerable scientific slack, but the Star Trek universe has historically tried a little bit harder than *this* to maintain a veneer of physical plausibility! Light doesn't travel at infinite speeds, instantaneously around the galaxy. It takes thousands of years for light to travel thousands of light years. No ifs ands or buts about it. There's no light beacon you can turn on to communicate instantaneously with the whole galaxy. Star Trek itself has long had faster-than-light communications ('subspace radio" and so on) and of course travel so light's relative slow-ness isn't a problem in this world, but clearly the writers thought a bunch of old-school Klingons doing a galaxy-wide light-signal was 'cool' and the hell with physics. This may be the least of Star Trek:Discovery's problems but I was prepared to cut it a lot of slack. Then the main plot point broke me!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I'm prepared to cut sci-fi on TV and in movies considerable scientific slack, but the Star Trek universe has historically tried a little bit harder than *this* to maintain a veneer of physical plausibility! Light doesn't travel at infinite speeds, instantaneously around the galaxy. It takes thousands of years for light to travel thousands of light years. No ifs ands or buts about it.

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I yield to you so categorically on all this, swanstep, that I literally have nothing to add. You certainly know your stuff! (OK, I added that.)

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

Thanks for putting up with my griping about science travesties ecarle. I just dropped this Star Trek:Discovery note in here as a comparison case for my complaints about the 'shooting down a satellite' polnt from Kingsmen 1. Star Trek's error here is *much* worse, much more of a science travesty than Kingsmen's, and on an even more central plot point. I expect that pop-Physicist/Astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson will be on the case shortly (this is a great teachable moment). No sign of it from his twitter feed yet tho'.