Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE  (2017)  ¢ ¢
    D: Matthew Vaughn
    Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Colin Firth,
    Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges, Channing Tatum,
    Halle Berry, Hanna Alström, Michael Gambon,
    Bruce Greenwood, Emily Watson, Elton John
This movie starts out with a slam-bang car chase in which an impeccably groomed and tailored agent played by Taron Egerton takes on an ex-colleague with bad intentions and a bionic arm. Yes, Eggsy's back, and it's not long before the Princess Tilde (once again) offers to do something special for him if he succeeds (once again) in saving the world. She doesn't specify what that might be, but Eggsy knows, and if you saw the first "Kingsman" movie, so do you. Samuel L. Jackson doesn't appear in this one, except in a five-second flashback, which is just about enough. Instead, you get Julianne Moore as a witchy villain named Poppy, who has cornered the international market in recreational drugs and hatched a plan to blackmail the world into making everything legal. Colin Firth is back from the dead as Eggsy's mentor, Galahad, minus his memory and one eye. Mark Strong returns as Merlin, the savvy and indispensable functionary whose job is to keep the Kingsman agents on task and (more or less) in line. There are some new old faces (Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry, Emily Watson, Michael Gambon), all with too little to do, and Elton John (?!?) plays himself in a flamboyant cameo. With a running time of 2 hours and 21 minutes, it's too long by a lot, and what seemed fresh and funny the first time around has started to go stale. Way more of everything isn't always enough.