Kingsman: The Golden Circle

The complaint every review makes, that the film is bloated and scattered, comes straight out of the cutting room. Matthew Vaughn’s first assembly ran three hours and forty minutes. Fox asked whether it should be released as two films, Vaughn refused, and roughly an hour and twenty minutes came out. He has said he lost his discipline, that every good idea simply got added. The surviving hundred and forty one minutes carries the scars: the American agents are introduced with enormous fanfare, then Tequila is sidelined a few scenes later by a blue rash and Ginger Ale barely functions until the finale. The second fact recalibrates expectations. Elton John is not a surprise cameo here but a running character across the second half with an action beat of his own. He had turned down a part in the first film and regretted it, and Colin Firth wrote to him personally this time round. The joke does not land once and stop, it is spread across the picture, which either delights or wears. Harry’s return costs something too: he comes back with amnesia, and restoring him requires a gun pointed at a puppy. Not for: anyone who has not seen the first film, since the story opens by undoing its death.