Spy-Fi Spectacle - Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Reviewed

Given the number of sequels that have been made, it's astonishing that the list of those that are equal or perhaps even better than their predecessor is still as short as it is. Off the top of my head, I would start the list with The Godfather Part II, followed by Wrath of Khan, Aliens, and The Dark Knight. There are others, certainly, but it is not a lengthy list.

Despite having most of the same players in place (director, writer, cast) and a novel enough premise, Kingsman: The Golden Circle does not make that illustrious list. It is, however, a tremendous action-adventure cut from much the same cloth as the first one; in fact, so much so, that may be what hinders it in becoming excellent.

The movie starts out with the independent intelligence organization Kingsman under attack, and effectively removed from the board early on. Their upending comes at the hand of Poppy, one of the most delightfully over-the-top supervillains ever to threaten the world, portrayed with unabashed joy by Julianne Moore.

From her secret lair deep in the jungle, which she has cleverly made out to look like a slice of 1950s Americana, (a la Fordlandia), she executes her plan for personal wealth and power by... well, you know what, it is hardly important, and more fun to discover yourself. Suffice to say that Moore's presence onscreen owes just as much to Martha Stewart as it does to Ernst Stavros Blofeld or Dr. No and is just tremendously fun.

Taron Egerton's Eggsy is on hand to save the day, obviously, and the filmmakers have followed through from the end of the first movie in some unexpected ways. Those of you, like me, who cheered the absence of a romantic subplot in Kingsman: The Secret Service should be prepared to see the new Galahad with someone in his life, but for the most part, this is handled pretty well. On the downside though, this doesn't have nearly as much storytelling heft as the the Pygmalion-like tutelage from the first film which transforms Eggsy from a near-hopeless, dole-seeking chav to a dapper gentleman spy.

This time around, the internal struggle is not class-based; instead, we are treated to a comparison between the methodology and styles of the preternaturally British Kingsmen and their American cousins, the Statesmen. Not tailors but liquor purveyors and not in bespoke suits but Stetsons, blue jeans and denim jackets (wait, isn't that actually a Canadian tuxedo?) , the louder, brasher, bolder Statesmen like Agents Tequila (Channing Tatum) and Whiskey (Pedro Pascal) stand out in sharp relief from their English counterparts, despite the shared affectations for all manner of spy gadgetry.

There is a more substantive conflict that arises out of Poppy's maniacal plot, which deals with our perception of those who use illegal drugs, which is not only how she accumulated her wealth and power, but also the lynchpin by which she intends to hold the world hostage. Not everyone is agreed on the correct course of action, which adds some internal tension and some grist for the debating mill, but is no substitute for Eggsy's trans-classist victory from the first film

Although it mightn't be as deep a film and the emotional notes not quite as sharp, The Golden Circle has a lot going for it. First of all, director Matthew Vaughn has lost none of his zeal for directing slam-bang action sequences, and now he has even more toys to play with: six-shooters, lassos and electro-bullwhips join the weaponized wristwatch and tactical umbrella from before. The admittedly ludicrous fights are a joy to behold, and despite the ceaseless camera movements and unconventional angles Vaughn adores, you always have a clear idea what is going on, even if what happens next transpires so quickly it has already happened by the time you perceive him setting it up. His imaginative framing continues to be one of the best elements of his movies.

I know Vaughn wanted to keep the return of Harry Hart (Colin Firth) a surprise, but the marketing fellows put paid to that despite his wishes, so let me just say that his appearance in this movie is handled appropriately, with a great deal of distance between the man he was then and the man he is in this film.

Is Hart's return, Poppy's plot, Eggsy's romance, any of it, really, at all plausible? Well, almost certainly yes, once you remember that The Golden Circle is a sequel to an adaptation of a comic book, which drew its inspiration from a legendarily popular series of spy films, which were in turn adapted from a series of far more seriously-minded novels from post-war England. All of these antecedents have played fairly fast and loose with their interpretation of reality, but none of them have leaned into the outlandishness of the gentleman spy genre and blended some of the best elements of both spy films and superhero films the way Kingsman has.

Abandoning verisimilitude for a far more entertaining larger-than-life ouvre, The Golden Circle continues to plow ahead through that same fertile ground that The Secret Service did, albeit perhaps not to the same depth. Vaughn and company have provided us with a fantastic bit of entertainment for the fall which tickles the same fancies as its predecessor, and knows exactly what kind of outlandish escapism it (mostly) is.

And while it doesn't really tread a lot of new ground and in completely unlikely to win over anyone who didn't like the precursor, fans of the first film are very likely to enjoy themselves almost as much as they did the last time they watched the world get saved.

Oh, and one of the best celebrity cameos ever, in my opinion.

Embracing Ambiversion

When I was in university, candidates for the Residence Life program were required to take a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test prior to their interview. It was the first of several introspective test I would take as an adult in order to gain some insight about myself, and perhaps a degree of quantification regarding my interactions with others.

In the interview, I was asked where I draw my energy from: by interacting with other people, or withdrawing by myself to recharge. Thinking in terms of the work I like to do, the service aspects and public speaking, extroversion seemed a pretty good fit. But that test, and several since, have placed me firmly on the fence as far as introversion/extroversion goes. And the older I get, the more sense that seems to make.

As much as I love people and social gatherings, and fancy myself a gregarious host, I can also be quite shy. I thought it was deeply ironic when I went to my first Toastmasters speech contest in Saskatoon a couple of years ago, that I was far more comfortable delivering a speech to three to four hundred strangers than I was going in to the banquet hall and wondering who to sit with, since I didn't know anyone.

It doesn't take a tremendous amount of insight to say that there will be gaps in any test trying to quantify any aspect of human interaction  or perception into one of four binary axes; life (like so many things in nature, it seems) tends to express itself as more of a spectrum, after all. Into this paradigm strides the concept of an ambivert: someone whose personality has a balance of introvert and extrovert features. And apparently, most of us are more likely to fit this descriptor than either extrovert or introvert.

Saturday was a perfect example. I was expecting to make dinner for a half-dozen or so people, so I figured I would brine a tenderloin. After driving Fenya to work and getting my groceries, I had the house to myself, as Glory and Audrey were in Saskatoon for a feis (a 4th place and 1st place medal, thanks for askin!).

By early afternoon, the washroom was cleaned, the tenderloin was soaking in salty water spiked with maple syrup and Guinness, and the potatoes were all cut. As I finished tidying up, the silence of the house became far more pronounced, but I strangely found myself hoping that my guests wouldn't be too early.

I grabbed a book (another all too rare occurrence, I'm sad to say!), and sat on the recliner with Nitti to read. Maybe it was the knowledge that the quiet time would soon be ending, but I found myself relishing the sunny, muted afternoon.

As you may well know, reticence is not one of my hallmarks, so I was glad when the first of my guests showed, and we were able to exchange greetings and beers in short order. When everyone arrived, we shared an enjoyable meal of delightful pork and sadly undercooked potatoes and enjoyed getting caught up with one another. Afterwards, we trotted out Risk Godstorm (congratulations Colin!), and laughed and chatted until after midnight. Well after midnight for the last three of us, in fact.

Beyond the good time, I hope I remember Saturday as a lesson in balance, and the importance of taking time by myself, for myself, in order to get more out of my time with others.

Long Divisions by Three Percent

It was bad enough when I read about the Three-Percenters in the United States, but then they came to Alberta.

The Three Percenters are an American Militia group, pledging to resist their own government based on their judgement that the U.S. Constitution has been infringed. They take their name from a dubious assertion that only 3% of the population of the British colonies in America actually fought in the Revolutionary War, while scholars ("or socialist eggheads", depending on who you ask) say that number was probably over 15%.

But you see how clever that is, right? If the sole surviving superpower was founded by a violent minority, well, it means anything is possible, even now! It means these guys and their camo-wearing, 'tacti-cool' wearing buddies aren't a fringe element, they are the backbone of the next revolution.

Make no mistake, this is a group of disaffected individuals who relish the thought at taking up arms against what they feel is an oppressive government, so in addition to promoting anti-immigration (and largely anti-Muslim) views, they also make a point of demonstrating that they have access to firearms, releasing videos depicting their 'drilling' and practicing 'small unit tactics'. These individuals feel that armed struggle against a 'co-opted' army and/or police is not an if, it's a when.

Worse still, they claim a significant part of their membership is ex-armed forces and ex-law enforcement, and it is easy to believe, since back in 2013, a number of Jersey City police officers were disciplined for wearing patches that read "One of the 3%".

Armed militias are nothing new, but at least in the past, they felt obliged to maintain a low profile. Not the Three Percenters though; they post videos on YouTube, have open Facebook groups, hold rallies and host demonstrations on the steps of courthouses and city halls to protest lax immigration enforcement and what they fear is the creeping manifestation of sharia law in North American society.

And these demonstration sites include Calgary.

Vice ran a feature on them back in June, describing the inherent danger of  a group "playing with the potentially lethal cocktail of xenophobia and firepower", and estimated their real-world numbers in Alberta alone at between 150 and 200. Their online registration is claimed to be over 1600.

They have showed up as 'volunteer security' at a couple of Calgary events, including a "Deplorable Day" (their words, not mine - well, mine too, I guess...) at City Hall that ended up attracting far more counter-protesters.

I have to tell you, the parallels to the 1930s are getting to the point where I am half expecting toothbrush mustaches to come back into style. As the world continues to shrink, and cultures mesh together with increasing force and friction, and more and more people are wistfully recalling the good old days that never were (well, unless you were a straight, white, Christian male of at least the middle class), there seems to be a greater and greater reflex among a growing number of people to reject it all, and become more insular and isolationist.

And while these exclusionary, totalitarian ideologies are on the rise, who is defending the rest of us against them? Antifa? The Black Bloc? The same yobbos who seem to be just as eager to bust heads as those on the other side? Didn't WWII get fought so we wouldn't have to sort this stuff out now?

Well, yes, but maybe not in the way that you think.

In a great piece for The Guardian entitled "Why we have to cut off the head of fascism again and again", novelist Patrick McGrath describes the fascist movement in Great Britain, both before and after the Second World War. Thanks to some superb historical fiction in comics and novels, as well as Sir Ian McKellen's fantastic adaptation of Richard III, I am well aware that Mosley's blackshirts and other pro-fascist, pro-Hitler elements were a movement up until England went to war, when they were sent to prison.

I had no idea that once the war ended and they got out, they got right back into it, marching speeching, scrawling swastikas in the dark. Which is where 43 Group comes into play:

The 43 Club was founded in early 1946. It was comprised, at first, of tough, well-trained Anglo-Jewish former servicemen. These men set about disrupting the public meetings of the resurgent fascist movement. They also infiltrated it, at great personal risk, to gather intelligence – to learn their enemy’s plans so as to then sabotage them. They fought the fascists on the streets of British cities, and attracted increasing numbers to their cause. They were disciplined, principled and restrained. They were highly effective tactically, and didn’t hesitate to use brute force when it was required. By 1949 the fascist movement in Britain was effectively finished. Mosley had moved to France.

(BTW, one of those members was none other than world famous hairstylist Vidal Sassoon!)

So here's the thing: as the world these days becomes more and more uncertain, I don't see the appeal of fascism becoming any less attractive to groups like the Three Percenters.

I don't see the Three Percenters realizing that the majority of people in either the U.S. and Canada would prefer not be be represented by them.

I don't see a bunch of thrill seekers in black watch caps, bandanas and sunglasses sorting them out when they get rowdy; "disciplined, principled and restrained" do not seem the most apt of descriptors.

And I don't see anyone like 43 Group willing to stand up to militia-like groups when they begin acting up in public.

So where does that leave us?

Well, I hope you didn't come here looking for answers, because I am fresh out, junior.

Unlike a lot of folks, I didn't laugh a lot when alt-right poster boy Richard Spencer got slugged in the face on camera. Many were of the opinion that punching a Nazi is just a great idea, but I had my doubts. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the hell out of it as a delicious piece of schadenfreude, but I recognized it as a guilty pleasure. As a precedent, I still find sucker-punching people with objectionable ideas to be a questionable way for any society to do business.

But I have a bad feeling there will be more opportunities for those of us with convictions to see those convictions put to the test. Maybe it will be on a bus, or in a food court, or on our way into city hall to file some paperwork, and we come across someone in a wanna-be biker outfit, flying the Three Percenter colours of a Spartan-style helmet with a Roman numeral III. Maybe they are haranguing someone for wearing a hijab, or blocking the way as part of a civil disobedience number.

I'm a middle-aged fat man who hasn't thrown a punch in anger since 4th grade, but I have a weird and unsettling feeling I might be in for a fight that day.

43 Group is alleged to have taken their name from the number of people in the room at the time of their founding. With any luck, no actual lines will get drawn up, so no one will need to actually toe them, but if it comes to that, I bet I will find more than 43 people in my corner.

Not Close Enough Encounter

(Please note: this post contains some spoilers for a 40-year-old movie.)

Glory and I rushed home from the family reunion in Picture Butte today in order to pick up Fenya from her UAlberta orientation and go see the 40th Anniversary print of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Fenya hadn't seen it for years and remembered next to nothing of it, and Glory had never seen it at all.

I was excited for our chance to see a great example of Steven Spielberg's early work (only his third movie!) in its natural environs-the movie theater- and for my girls to see older filmmaking in a modern cinema.

On our way to the campus, I told Glory about seeing the movie in 1980, and how the first few times I saw it I was left with more questions than answers - something I found frustrating then, but came to appreciate as I grew older.

In the end, though, I think she found the experience more off-putting than inspiring.

Most of her discomfort began during the finale, when the first, spindly-legged alien emerges from the mothership, almost spider-like in its presentation, but her real consternation was the departure of Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfus).

"So, he just leaves his wife and family?" she asked, with a hint of judgment. And she is right; it is hardly the most accessible of happy endings, despite the triumphal sounds of John Williams' brilliant score as the mothership departs.

Before the movie began, a featurette about the making of the movie was shown, and I was gratified at how interested the girls were. A lot of archival footage and some of Spielberg's own home movies were included, but there were also current-day interview with himself as well as modern day aspirants J.J. Abrams (Super 8) and Denis Villeneuve (The Arrival).

Abrams focus was on the way in which Spielberg changed movies, how he strove to show real, recognizable people who lived in clutter and chaos instead of sanitized and idealized archetypes. Villeneueve, on the other hand, made his case that CE3K is a movie that captures the ordeal of a director creating a movie.

As someone who has sometimes struggled to convey creative ideas to others, it is an appealing allegory. Who hasn't felt like Roy Neary at some point though, feeling a nagging compulsion about the way something should just be, an inalienable rightness, that does not invite action so much as compels it.

In following their vision, a creator risks alienating all those around them who do not perceive it in the same manner they do. In the end, the final production is often carried less on storyboards and precisely measured story beats, than on the strength of will of the director and the faith that their confidence generates almost as a byproduct.

Just before heading off to bed, Glory told me that she did appreciate the film, and was glad we went. I was initially a little disappointed that she didn't share my sense of wonderment at the end of Close Encounters, but on the other hand, it is also encouraging that she is willing to make her own assessment about the happiness of a Hollywood ending, and that her empathy is as much with the family left behind as it is with a star struck voyager. It feels as though there may be a parable in there somewhere, about both the power and the cost of belief.

With any luck, she will get to see it again at some point, and I can ask if her perspective has changed at all, as mine did over the years.