Kingsman: The Golden Circle Review (2017)

There should be some form of punishment for a director that manages to waste Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry and Julianne Moore in a single movie. Matthew Vaughn is the culprit and “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” is the film.

At its best, “The Golden Circle” (a sequel to “Kingsman: The Secret Service”) is a goofy, kinetic spy action/comedy that pokes fun at and gives the middle finger to the “Bond” franchise. It’s gleefully violent and vulgar, sometimes unnecessarily so. There are a bevy of nifty high tech gadgets to get the characters out of just about every tight situation, and the costuming is exquisite.  “Kingsman” can be fun and delightfully eccentric but like a lot of sequels it falls into the trap of redundancy and tedium, among other issues.  Vaughn and co writer Jane Goldman try to expand the “Kingsman” universe and introduce new characters in the process but fail to do anything substantial with them; hence my suggestion in the first paragraph.  Jail time might be a little harsh, perhaps a fine?

Events pick up pretty much where the first “Kingsman” left off. Young Eggsy (Taron Edgerton, charming and sincere) is enjoying his life as a secret agent as well as his relationship with Swedish Princess Tilde (Hanna Alstrom). However, things go immediately wrong when all the Kingsman headquarters in London are bombed by a drug lord named Poppy (Julianne Moore). With nowhere else to turn, Eggsy and fellow agent Merlin (Mark Strong) head to America to join forces with The Statesman, an American spy organization. Here, Eggsy also encounters his old friend and mentor Harry (Colin Firth) who he thought had died.

Operating out of Kentucky and using a whisky distillery as its front, The Statesman are like the Kingsman except that they wear cowboy hats and boots, and drink whisky instead of scotch or martinis. The organization is run by Champ, (Bridges) along with under agents Whisky, (Pedro Pascal) Tequila (Tatum) and Ginger (Berry). In theory, this seems like a fun way to expand on the “Kingsman” mythology but Vaughn lets it go to waste.

The scenes that take place in Kentucky at The Statesman headquarters often play out like a stilted product placement for a fictional brand of whisky. * Meanwhile our new southern fried agents are given very little to do. What’s the point in having Tatum play a cowboy spy named Tequila if he’s only going to be in a few scenes? The lovely, molasses mouth Bridges is reduced to thankless cameo status and Berry’s part as an agent frustrated with her role in the organization is even more thankless. There are large stretches of the picture were Berry and Bridges are absent for unexplained reasons. The Statesman material is occasionally funny but we’re just not given enough and therefore it doesn’t really cohere with the rest of the picture.

Ultimately, “The Golden Circle” pivots into a tedious and overlong rehash of the first film, with Eggsy, Harry and Merlin having to infiltrate Poppy’s layer and save all of humanity. Edgerton, Firth and Strong have a great onscreen repartee like they did the first time around and the surrogate father-son bond between Eggsy and Harry can be poignant but what’s the point in introducing this new spy organization if you’re just going to treat it like a one dimensional narrative detour and then fall back on what you already did?

Moore is given a little more to do and for a while her eccentric outcast CEO turned drug dealer is compelling. Poppy lives in undiscovered ancient ruins in Cambodia that she’s outfitted with a 1950’s American aesthetic—an authentic 50’s diner, a bowling alley etc. She has a superficially cheerful, high voiced demeanor that masks a psychopathic interior. Poppy can be downright terrifying but even she fails to meet her full super villainess potential as Vaughn curiously throws her under a figurative bus, having her meet a frustratingly anticlimactic fate.

I could go on. Vaughn tries to balance spy action/comedy with a heated but half-baked critique of America’s ongoing war on drugs (and the layers of hypocrisy that go along with it) with mixed results. The political commentary is intriguing yet unfocused and like The Statesman stuff it doesn’t always jell with the rest of the film. There’s a reoccurring Elton John gag that’s funny until it’s beaten into the ground. The romantic subplot involving Eggsy and Tilde is consistently tepid and is resolved via the underwhelming damsel-in-distress device. You can probably sense the reoccurring theme of female characters being given the short end of the stick in this film. There are good elements to be found in “The Golden Circle” but by and large it contains a lot of missed potential.

C-

*Turns out it’s a real whisky; a spinoff of Old Forester produced in partnership with the film. More here in this New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/27/business/media/statesman-bourbon-kingsman.html?mcubz=0&_r=0

Logan Lucky Review (2017)

While watching “Oceans Eleven” back in 2001 did you ever wonder what that heist comedy (directed by prolific auteur Steven Soderbergh) would be like if it was not about glamorous thieves robbing a snazzy Las Vegas casino but about a group blue collar folks from West Virginia and North Carolina who decide to rob a NASCAR track? Well, Soderbergh did, and he’s come out of retirement (from feature filmmaking) to make “Logan Lucky--” the exuberant redneck “Oceans Eleven” remake you didn’t know you wanted.

The film primarily revolves around brothers Jimmy (Channing Tatum, in his fourth collaboration with Soderbergh) and Clyde Logan (Adam Driver) who are down on their luck. Jimmy was a high school football star/failed NFL prospect, while Clyde got his hand blown off in Iraq. Believing that their entire family is cursed, they decide to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway during a major race. It’s one of those elaborate, outrageous heists that can only be pulled off in the movies. Among other components, the brothers will need to break well-known safe buster Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) out of jail for the job and then sneak him back into jail without anyone noticing. The Logan brothers also enlist the help of Joe’s brothers, Sam (Brian Gleeson) and Fish (Jack Quaid).

Despite how that plot synopsis might read, the dramatic stakes aren’t particularly high in “Logan Lucky.” The picture’s tone is loose and playful, while the pacing is relaxed all the way through. The mechanics of the heist can be confusing and not a lot of things really go wrong, even during the extended heist sequence itself. There are a few minor narrative hiccups the characters run into along the way but overall everything goes very smoothly, perhaps too smoothly for a film about a heist. In this regard,  “Logan Lucky” can feel predictable.

On top of that, the motivation for wanting to rob the racetrack in the first place is hazy and lacking in urgency. Soderbergh and screenwriter Rebecca Blunt (who may or may not be a real person) don’t establish the Logan brothers as desperate people who are caught in a bind and forced to commit a crime. Yes, they’re middle to lower class and Jimmy loses his blue-collar job at the beginning but the decision to execute the heist is treated very casually. That might have been okay, except that the film also doesn’t establish these characters as the career criminal types who would want to pull off such an elaborate crime.

And yet, “Logan Lucky” is still a lot of fun, primarily due to the cast and Blunt’s witty screenplay. In addition to Tatum and Driver, who turn in amusing and earnest performances, Soderbergh assembles a superb ensemble cast made up of young and old talent including: Daniel Craig, Riley Keough, Katie Holmes, Dwight Yoakam, Hilary Swank and Katherine Waterston, among others. Some of these actors only pop in for a scene or two (usually in a nonchalant manner) but they always make a memorably goofy impression. Also, can I say how great it is to see Craig playing a character that isn’t Bond, especially an eccentric, bleach blonde haired safe buster? Mr. Craig, you’ve been missed.

Aside from the cast, what keeps us engaged in “Logan Lucky” are the small comedic moments and details rather than the broad narrative beats. The nutty, bumbling interactions between the Logan and Bang brothers as they painstakingly plan the robbery. Those little quirks that make the characters feel human instead of comedic caricatures (Clyde’s insistence that he lost his hand and not his arm). Those off beat, absurdist scenes that make you forget about the film’s predictable nature.

For example, the Logan brothers meet one of Joe’s contacts nicknamed “The Bear” to acquire some materials for the heist, who turns out to be a man in a bear suit; a delightfully out of left moment that generated a hardy laugh from the audience at my preview screening. On a scene-by-scene basis, “Logan Lucky” is packed with laughs. It may not be great but Soderbergh’s return to filmmaking is a light, entertaining affair.

 B