Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

Though my original review was perhaps a little more even-tempered than I initially recalled, I look back on Kingsman: The Secret Service with great fondness, cringing at some of the bawdier moments but overall greatly sympathizing with director Matthew Vaughn’s appreciation for the 1960s era of spy films (particularly James Bond, though – as the characters are fond of reminding you – “dis ain’t dat kinda film, bruv”). While its sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, is an enthusiastic action film with more than a few decent thrills, I was not transported in the way I was with the first film; that is, if the original were Skyfall, The Golden Circle is more Spectre, a sequel that doesn’t misstep but doesn’t transcend like its predecessor did.

After a coordinated attack on Kingsman, secret agent Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and gadget guy Merlin (Mark Strong) link up with their “American cousins” (Jeff Bridges, Channing Tatum, Halle Berry, and Pedro Pascal) at Statesman to avenge their fallen comrades. As the trailers have revealed, however, a comrade also rises – Harry Hart (Colin Firth) returns to the service for the fight against the cartel leader Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore), who controls the worldwide drug trade from her 1950s-infused lair.

As I was watching The Golden Circle, I couldn’t help but think of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, a sequel to a similarly inventive and strong first outing. Though the two sequels do have a similar “more of the same” quality to them, never triumphing as their predecessors might have led one to expect, I can safely say that Golden Circle is unlike A Dame in that it’s not boring. Where A Dame felt almost sleepily safe and content merely to reproduce what had gone before, Golden Circle shakes up the script and goes to places one wouldn’t expect. Though slickly devised, Harry’s return is anything but smooth, and it leads to an interesting new dynamic with Eggsy. It’s a real treat also to see a British stereotype of Americans; if The Secret Service satirized Britain’s vision of itself, Golden Circle is a dashing wink of a cliché of the United States, with its cowboy whiskey peddlers and honky-tonk bars.

The Golden Circle is not, as the trailers might have led you to believe, a film about the Statesman agents (though apparently Vaughn wants to make that spinoff). Aside from Pascal, who participates in the film’s rousingly thrilling Spy Who Loved Me by way of OHMSS action setpiece, the Statesman cast amounts to an extended cameo. The focus is squarely – rightly, as fun watching Statesman can be – on the Kingsman agents and the high-octane action that follows them. The film opens with an extensive (and, in IMAX, quite loud) taxi chase through London; you’ve also got the ski chase sequence, a snowy shootout, and the raid on Poppy’s HQ, all of which feel substantively different than what we saw in the first Kingsman film.

This Kingsman is about twenty minutes longer than the first one, and I have to say it does feel it. There’s a recurring gag about Elton John that overstays its welcome, and this film does feel a bit bogged down by laddish humor, perhaps more so than before (but mercifully not as bad as in Kick-Ass 2, which actively suffered from this). The first Kingsman famously ends (no spoilers) with an unconventional send-up of Bond’s get-the-girl closer, and while it’s tonally off-putting it wasn’t as cringingly gross as Eggsy’s encounter at the Glastonbury Music Festival, which does leave a bad taste on the film for a while. Perhaps overall the film needs more of what Colin Firth brought to the first film and to Eggsy’s training – a Pygmalion for the surveillance crowd, polishing up the rough bits and reminding us to stand a little straighter. (Put another way, “Manners maketh man.”)

Back in 2015, Kingsman: The Secret Service was better than most of us were expecting it to be, especially since it was pitted (you’ll recall) against the guaranteed box-office winner 50 Shades of Gray. The Golden Circle, however, is not as good as it should have been, though neither is it as bad as it could have been. It’s not as impressive as the first, which is a tragedy, but it’s a fine second entry and a cheering diversion at its best.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is rated R for “sequences of strong violence, drug content, language throughout, and some sexual material.” Directed by Matthew Vaughn. Written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn. Based on the comic book by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. Starring Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Jeff Bridges, Channing Tatum, Halle Berry, Pedro Pascal, and Julianne Moore.

Catwoman (2004)

I finally sat down to watch Catwoman because it was by my count the last comic book superhero movie I hadn’t yet seen (I've since been reminded of the existence of Shaquille O'Neal's Steel). And after watching it, I can confirm that Suicide Squad was actually the last comic book superhero movie I’d never seen, because Catwoman has absolutely nothing to do with the characters published by DC Comics beyond the overlapping imagery of leather, whips, and cats. But as much as it has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made, I just can’t muster up the enthusiasm to tear it apart frame by frame, because the truth is that Catwoman is just appallingly uninspiring on every level.

Halle Berry stars as Patience Phillips, a graphic designer for a cosmetics company run by a couple (Lambert Wilson and Sharon Stone) who are more lazily written than they are evil. Patience discovers the shady truth about the company’s latest skin cream, falls victim to a corporate conspiracy, but is brought back to life by an ancient feline deity, and believe it or not the film continues to fall apart from there.

Let’s not mince words here – Catwoman is a terrible film. It’s almost entirely unwatchable, and it’s insulting how it lures in an audience with the promise of a story that doesn’t even get approximated in the film. But in spite of all the reasons I should be mad at Catwoman, I’m almost more disappointed – in the film, in Halle Berry, and in myself for going out of my way to borrow the movie and watch it. Throughout the film, I kept thinking to myself that I needed to cleanse my palate with either Batman Returns or The Dark Knight Rises, much more accurate representations of what Catwoman is supposed to be. Ultimately, I took a nap – a cat nap, if you will (maybe the only cat-related pun the film doesn’t trot out with all the subtlety of Harpo Marx’s bicycle horn) – largely because I couldn’t find the energy to do anything else.

Catwoman is a thoroughly enervating experience, and in spite of the grotesquely dizzying editing (the kind which would make even Paul Greengrass queasy), it’s incredibly boring to boot. That’s the worst thing a film can be, boring, and even at 104 minutes Catwoman feels agonizingly protracted. The script is predictable and wrought with clichés, the characters are the pinnacle of thinly drawn – so thin that Berry literally walks between prison bars – and the stakes of the film are so disjointed that you’re not sure if this is a romantic comedy between cops and criminals or a superhero film where the fate of the world rests in Catwoman’s claws.

To mirror the disjointed nature of the film, I have a series of disjointed criticisms – why establish that Catwoman stole a one-of-a-kind necklace if her identity is uncovered by a forensic analysis of lipstick? What movie did Alex Borstein’s randy friend character step out of, and can we put her back? How many times does the film need to have a “surprise reveal” that Sharon Stone is actually the villain? (I counted three.) Is this movie supposed to be in canon with Batman Returns, or does it merely plagiarize the “reanimated by cats” origin story? And has director Pitof ever actually seen a basketball game before?

Perhaps most importantly, how did this film cost $100 million to make? (For comparison, Deadpool had a reported budget of $58 million.) I can’t fathom where the money went – the special effects are dodgy, the acting is wooden, and the direction is purposeless. On top of the retrograde sexual politics and leery male gaze, Catwoman’s greatest sin is its intrinsic dullness.

Catwoman is rated PG-13 for “action violence and some sensuality.” Directed by Pitof. Written by Theresa Rebeck, John Brancato, Michael Ferris, and John Rogers. Starring Halle Berry, Sharon Stone, and Benjamin Bratt.

Die Another Day (2002)

After forty years and half as many movies, the James Bond franchise has legs like few others (Godzilla comes to mind for longevity), and on the surface Die Another Day pays homage to a lot of great moments from the long history of the series.  The film itself, however, is the epitome of a trainwreck:  it starts strong and quickly derails, all the while remaining a ruin away from which you can’t tear your eyes.

After months of torture in a North Korean prison camp, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is released in a hostage trade orchestrated by M (Judi Dench) to root out a British conspirator.  Bond pursues Korean terrorist Zao (Rick Yune) to Cuba, where he learns that American spy Jinx Johnson (Halle Berry) is also on the case.  Together, the two follow the trail to British diamond baron Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) and his orbital laser satellite.

From that plot synopsis, you already have a sense of the biggest problem with Die Another Day – its staggering unevenness.  The film sprints from setpiece to setpiece with little connective tissue between scenes other than someone coming in and expositing to Bond, “This is where you need to go next.”  The more dangerous message of these weak transitions is the intimation that Bond is rusty and doesn’t know his way around a secret mission anymore.  Consequently, the inorganic quality of the plot results in a film that is neither a triumph nor a catastrophe.  There are moments when Die Another Day is quite entertaining, but the moments when it isn’t prevent the whole from coalescing into a fulfilling moviegoing experience.

Case in point – at about the midpoint of the film, there’s a fantastic fencing match between Bond and Graves.  It’s energetic, fantastically choreographed and directed, and essential in developing the personalities of the two men.  The stuntwork is quite excellent, and the scene positively crackles.  Like any good setpiece, it’s easily divorced from the larger narrative, enjoyable on its own merits, but everything surrounding the duel is incomprehensibly disconnected; it’s anyone’s guess why the two men duel in the first place, nor does it make much sense for Graves to invite Bond to his secret lair after the duel.

And when the whole film proceeds in such a way, it’s just exhausting.  The fundamental flaw of the film is that in nearly every aspect of the narrative, Die Another Day is unable to commit to one direction.  In the character of Jinx, the filmmakers have an opportunity to give Bond an equal number, a female American agent every bit as skilled as he is; instead, Jinx is as often (if not more frequently) a damsel in distress.  Halle Berry is very good in the role, equally smart and sexy, but the role itself is somewhat thin.  After one particularly great fight sequence in the bowels of a plummeting airplane, Jinx dispatches her adversary and then quite literally sits down and waits for Bond to save her.

The Jinx of the first half of the film would never have done that, but it seems that halfway through Die Another Day everything in the film goes topsy-turvy and stops making sense.  The film’s opener, with hovercrafts and silly puns, is ludicrous enough but remains safely within the loose realism of the Bond films.  Once we get into the second half, with space lasers and ice palaces, the film surrenders entirely to poor CGI effects and absurd gadgetry far beyond what the boundaries of credulity can accommodate.  As if the invisible car weren’t preposterous enough, the film sees Bond surfing multiple times, and in the film’s climax Gustav Graves dons an electrified suit of armor for no apparent reason whatsoever; there’s a gag about making his suitcase device more ergonomic, but you won’t find this gizmo in an IKEA near you. 

It’s a real shame that Die Another Day goes so far off the rails, not only because it’s Brosnan’s final outing as 007, though it is tragic that the promise of Goldeneye was never fully met during Brosnan’s tenure.  The presence of story beats that actually work well – the motivation of the villain to live up to his father, the traitor within MI6 as an update on the classic henchman trope, and M’s unwavering faith in Bond – each make the film that much more excruciating because there are glimpses of a Bond film that could have been.  Instead, we get a movie with more explosions in the opening sequence than any other entire Bond film, turning up the volume instead of the intellect.

Perhaps the worst aesthetic offense is the moment when M tells Bond, “While you were gone, the world changed,” suggesting a post-9/11 self-awareness and a recognition of the new state of geopolitics.  Unfortunately, though, the film never really engages with that idea.  While positing a new paradigm for Bond, the film goes for broke in the direction of the worst excesses of the franchise; the space laser recalls Moonraker, while the hyper-technology seems like an unironic version of the exploding pen Never Say Never Again pulled off with a knowing wink.  With all the other callbacks to earlier films – Jinx’s bikinied exit from the ocean a la Dr. No, the Union Jack parachute ripped from The Spy Who Loved Me, and even more overt allusions like the Thunderball jetpack’s cameo, among others – the fortieth anniversary of the film franchise seems to attempt to argue implicitly that Bond doesn’t need to change.  The end result, however, tells an entirely different story; this is a Bond in desperate need of a new wind of change (so long as he doesn’t attempt to surf on it).

Die Another Day is rated PG-13 for “action violence and sexuality.”  There’s a quick flash of blood in one scene of impalement and an occasional slash during a duel sequence; other characters die with no blood visible, while the film shows glimpses of Bond being tortured in North Korea.  As noted above, nearly everything explodes in this film.  Bond sleeps with two women (a low number for him), but all we see are bare backs.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of Casino Royale (2006) on October 7, 2014!

Monday at the Movies - August 6, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-Nine of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week I’ll be covering the original X-Men trilogy.  (The prequels will be getting their own post further down the line.)

X-Men (2000) – In many ways, we comic book movie fans owe a lot to Bryan Singer, who demonstrated in this film that the genre was a viable one beyond the self-parody of the Schumacher era.  Singer wisely opts to throw viewers into the midst of the mythology without a lengthy origin sequence; we join Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Rogue (Anna Paquin) as they meet the X-Men, a group of powerful mutants led by Professor X (Patrick Stewart) in opposition to the evil Magneto (Ian McKellen).  Using Wolverine and Rogue as entry points is genius; diehard fans already love Wolverine, and newcomers will find Jackman one of the more engaging comics-to-film translations.  But the film is populated by fantastic actors – including Halle Berry, who doesn’t do much but does it well – and none are more brilliant than Stewart and McKellen, who as dueling foes are more Shakespeare than Stan Lee (who cameos, by the way – his first in a Marvel movie).  Even James Marsden, who’s usual more milquetoast than Patrick Wilson, proves a good fit as the stick-in-the-mud Cyclops.  As director, Singer does a great job making the soap opera source material accessible and streamlined without sacrificing the emotional complexity of the characters; there are hundreds of X-Men, but Singer picks the big ones and never loses sight of the fact that their interactions are more interesting than the giant machine Magneto builds for the surreal climax of the film.  Above all, this is a film that feels real, that winks not ironically but lovingly at its source material, acknowledging its depth without overloading its audience.

X2:  X-Men United (2003) – Singer proves the rule here with a comic book sequel that is leaps and bounds better than its predecessor (which, if you’ll recall, was no slouch).  Unfettered by the necessity to introduce the characters and their world, Singer dives headlong into the central problem of acceptance by pitting the X-Men against military bureaucrat William Stryker (Brian Cox), whose policy of indiscriminate mutant genocide unites heroes and villains.  Everything successful about the original stands here, as well, turned up to 11; the acting excels, from McKellen as caged animal Magneto to newcomer Cox, whose performance drips sadistic menace with each drawled consonant.  The cast of characters is beefed up a little, but never disproportionately beyond what the film can handle and never without significant narrative and thematic purpose; each addition deepens rather than overfills.  X2, perhaps more than its antecedent, operates on the level of metaphor, something I really want my superhero films to do.  Here the metaphor is on the nature of intolerance, which Singer carries off without being overbearing; in one standout scene, among my favorites in the trilogy, a mutant’s mother asks, “Have you tried not being a mutant?”  It’s an oddly quiet moment in a summer blockbuster, but it’s one that reminds us what’s at stake behind the flash of optic blasts and the snikt of razor claws.  Bonus points for its clever link with Stryker’s abuse of his own mutant son, which reminds us that bigotry isn’t a spectrum.  Even the previous film’s villain recognizes this, and McKellen’s nuanced return is a more than welcome one.

X-Men 3:  The Last Stand (2006) – When Singer stepped aside from his pet franchise to direct Superman Returns, Brett Ratner stepped in.  It’s a series of bad decisions that led to a pair of lackluster films (more on Superman Returns later), which is a shame because there are obvious moments where X-Men 3 is on the right track and other moments when it obviously goes awry.  The introduction of the “mutant cure” is in many ways a perfect end to a trilogy about what to do about heterogeneity, but Ratner seems to overcompensate for getting a shot at the X-Men toy box by cramming the film with scores of new characters who don’t do much at all.  (Ask yourself how many of their names you can remember.)  Worse, the film kills off some of the more interesting characters very early on, presumably to make room for the new faces, but for my money the film never really recovers from (spoiler warning) the death of Professor X.  The film trades in clichés, as when a military drill sergeant is played by R. Lee Ermey or when a character repeats, dead serious, the bromide about a woman scorned.  The climax is among the better action sequences in the trilogy, if only on a purely visceral level; Magneto’s manipulation of the Golden Gate Bridge is a brilliant visual, and the execution of the “fastball special” is as fun on film as it is on panel.  But the film fumbles so much before that point – and butchers the “Dark Phoenix” plotline almost beyond recognition – that X-Men 3 tries to be too much and ultimately never succeeds at being much at all.  The trilogy deserved better.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!