By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
Following his deliriously astonishing “Kingsman” (2015), Matthew Vaughn’s cynical, R-rated sequel, “Kingsman: The Golden Circle,” continues the stylized spoof of James Bond spy stories.
With her retro-50s headquarters hidden deep in Cambodian rain forest ruins, the megalomaniacal villain is Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore), the world’s most successful — and demented — drug dealer, who manages to destroy most of the Kingsman knights along with their bespoke tailor shop on Savile Row.
That leaves only Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton), the cheeky former London street kid-turned-superspy who is in love with Princess Tilde (Hanna Alstrom), daughter of Sweden’s King and Queen (Bjorn Granath, Lena Endre), whom he rescued in the first film’s climax.
Eggsy and gadget-wizard Merlin (Mark Strong) venture across the pond to Kentucky to find American spy allies at Statesman bourbon brewery, run by Champagne (Jeff Bridges), whose cowboy team includes Tequila (Channing Tatum), Whiskey (Pedro Pascal) and tech-whiz Ginger Ale (Halle Berry).
Meanwhile, Poppy has implanted a mysterious virus to infect and kill every drug user in the world. She intends to blackmail the President of the United States (Bruce Greenwood) to bargain for the antidote. But her plan backfires when he opts to double-cross her — to the chagrin of his chief-of-staff (Emily Watson).
Meanwhile, having miraculously survived being shot in the eye, suave Harry Hart (Colin Firth) — whose Kingsman code name is “Galahad” — is suffering from “retrograde amnesia.” Locked in a padded cell, he believes he’s a lepidopterist (a butterfly collector).
And there’s an extended pop cameo by Elton John, being held captive as Poppy’s piano-playing prisoner.
Based on comic books by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, it’s sloppily scripted by director Vaughn and Jane Goldman, who rely far too much on crudely explicit sex gags, maniacal action and exaggerated CGI, lacking the essential element of surprise which made the original such a success.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” is a sassy, satirical 6, as the flippant, fun-filled, fantasy franchise continues.
Having entranced audiences with “Bend It Like Beckham, “British-raised filmmaker Gurinder Chadha goes back to her family’s roots with “Viceroy’s House,” a splendid historical drama.
Set in India during the chaotic weeks leading up to the 1947 Partition, it begins with the words: “History is written by the victors.”
Having served as Viceroy of Burma until its independence, patrician Lord Louis Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville) and his compassionate wife Edwina (Gillian Anderson) are dispatched by King George VI to diplomatically conclude England’s 300-year colonial rule and hand over power to India’s new leaders.
Which is easier said than done because Mountbatten must decide whether to accede to the wishes of Mahatma Gandhi (Neeraj Kabi) and Jawaharal Nehru (Tanveer Ghani) to set up a pluralistic nation with a Hindu majority, or listen to the pleas of Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Denzuil Smith) to partition India into two countries, establishing a Muslim-majority Pakistan.
“Division doesn’t create peace,” warns Gandhi. “It creates havoc.”
During this tumult, an ardent young Hindu, Jeet (Manish Dayal) arrives in Dehli to train as Mountbatten’s valet. He is smitten with Aalia (Huma Qureshi), a dutiful member of the Viceroy’s household staff, who is promised to a Muslim man chosen by her father (Om Puri).
Their illicit romantic conflict serves as a microcosm of the far larger struggle, resulting in the violent carnage and suffering that inevitably followed the sectarian displacement of more than 10 million people. It was the largest human migration in history, as Muslims trekked to Pakistan, displacing Hindus and Sikhs, who went to settle within India’s newly drawn borders.
Based on “The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition” by Narendra Singh Sarila, it’s been adapted by Chadha with co-writers Paul Mayeda Berges and Moira Buffini, who utilize a familiar “Upstairs, Downstairs” formula, amplified by Ben Smithard’s visuals and A.H. Rahman’s score.
FYI: What Chadha leaves out is Edwina Mountbatten’s well-publicized affair with Nehru.
On the Granger Gauge, “Viceroy’s House” is a personally poignant 7, revealing a cultural legacy that still reverberates today.
J.D. Salinger repeatedly refused to allow a movie to be made of “The Catcher in the Rye,” so in “Rebel in the Rye” filmmaker Danny Strong dramatizes the story of how and why this literary classic was written.
Adapting Kenneth Slawenski’s biography, Strong asserts not only that Holden Caulfield was Salinger’s alter ego but also that Oona O’Neill, playwright Eugene O’Neill’s daughter, was Sally Hayes.
When he was 22, Jerome David Salinger (Nicholas Hoult) fell madly in love with then-16 year-old Oona (Zoey Deutch). Flanked by socialites Gloria Vanderbilt and Carol Marcus (who married William Saroyan), Oona played coy with many suitors, including Orson Welles and cartoonist Peter Arno.
But Salinger persisted and, when he went off to fight in World War II, Oona promised to wait for him. So when he read in the newspaper that she’d married 53 year-old Charlie Chaplin, he was devastated.
Dispatched to Europe just in time for D-Day, Salinger was permanently scarred by the brutality that he witnessed on the front lines, suffering what we now know as PTSD. Nevertheless, encouraged by his agent (Sarah Paulson), he kept working on his 1951 novel about poignant adolescent angst.
Translated into 30 languages, it has sold 65 million copies and continues to sell 250,000 copies a year.
From childhood, Salinger felt tortured. Encouraged by his mother (Hope Davis) but thwarted by his critical father (Victor Garber), he studied creative writing at Columbia under Whit Burnett (Kevin Spacey), editor of “Story” magazine, who became his mentor, insisting that Holden Caulfield was worthy of his own novel.
Salinger later published “Franny and Zooey,” “Nine Stories” and other minor works. Married three times, he eventually chose a reclusive life of Zen Buddhism and meditation, isolated in the Cornish, New Hampshire woods until his death in 2010.
Despite Strong’s best efforts, the essence of J.D. Salinger still remains elusive.
On the Granger Gauge, “Rebel in the Rye” is a feeble 5, cheesy and implausible.
(Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
