This movie is the sequel to the first Kingsman that was released in early 2015. The idea of these two movies is the same, an over the top, popular music, fast paced special effects, James Bond like action, with some humor mixed in. The difference with this movie is that there are many more celebrities this time, including Hale Berry, Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore and even Elton John.

I am not a fan of past paced scene changes and this movie has too many of those, although it was never as bad as a typical Micheal Bay movie. At times being so extremely unusual works and sometimes it doesn’t and I thought this film had a mixture of things that worked at about a 50% rate. Julianne Moore’s portrayal of a very strange, extremely even tempered female villain definitely followed the attempt by the screenwriter and director to do something that has never been done before, but throwing in the use of a meat grinder to kill the people who betray her was way too over the top.

I feel about this new version of Kingsman like I felt about the last one. Mostly entertaining, but overall a pretty average action movie.

There are many horrible things about tragedies like the Boston Marathon Bombing that happened on April 15, 2013. Some of these horrible things are obvious when we see the aftermath and hear about the deaths and injuries, including for this terrorist attack 3 people who were killed including an 8 year old boy and 264 people were injured, 29 severely including the main character of the movie “Stronger” Jeff Bauman who lost both of his legs. For days and weeks after a major terrorist incident like this one, the press covers it almost day and night, but then very slowly, just like any other news event it fades day by day and what is left are the victims who wonder why and try to rationalize how something this horrible happened to them. After all the dust has settled they are left to continue to live the rest of their lives, somehow. A movie like Stronger is so important because we never hear about the victims of horrible terrorist attacks or some other tragedy like the Hurricanes in Houston and in Florida after the event happens. There is always newer news and in the case of the main character of the movie Stronger, its too upsetting to think about a poor young man who lost both of his legs because of two sick diseased terrorists. We learn that Bauman was poor, still living with his parents in a slovenly 2 bedroom apartment and working at a Costco prior to being a victim of this terrorist attack. So, even his life prior to losing his legs was never easy and then suddenly his life became unbearable.

We will all wonder after any terrorist attack about what was the point the terrorists were trying to make. Did they leave a note, explaining why they did what they did? We know they hate us, but why? Can we ever understand the reasoning of someone so insane that they would place ball bearings and nails into a pressure cooker to blow up innocent people, knowing that the weapons they put inside the bomb would maim so many, taking away their limbs, their eyes, their face and even their lives? The level of rationalization necessary for a normal person to understand something like this is impossible, so some of us try and forgive them for what they did, but most of us never can.

The main character Jeff Bauman is played extremely well by Jake Gyllenhaal and because of his acting in this movie there is talk of an Oscar nomination that I agree is justified. The subtlety of Gyllenhall’s acting for me was the best part of his performance, realizing that to show the real life of a victim who lost both of his legs because of Terrorists, it was important to not show anything more than the zombie like, trying to exist day by day in a state of numb disbelief that I thought was a perfect and realistic performance. His girlfriend was also played extremely well by Tatiana Maslany and her performance was the equal of Gyllenhaal’s in showing that in many ways the new reality of people related to a person of tragedy is almost as difficult as the victim’s they live with. I thought the actors who played Bauman’s family were also extremely good in their roles as they struggled to help him with regaining some kind of a normal life after such a huge tragedy and how they all struggled with what to say, realizing that there is nothing you can say to help someone who is going through something like this.

I thought this film was extremely well done and I highly recommend it.

I can only speculate about what Steven King who wrote the It: A Novel many years ago was thinking about at the time. I think that King wrote this 1164 page novel about an evil clown because he was fascinated about the bullying so many young people have to endure in school and like the rest of us, wondered where this level of evil and cruelty comes from within a person so young. As most of us in this country have heard, bullying is an epidemic and in recent years this problem has become worse because of social media and cyber-bullying. We have all heard about news reports where some young person has committed suicide because of bullying or have gone on school shooting sprees, killing many people in retaliation, the most famous is the Columbine Massacre in 1999.

The evil clown known as Pennywise, played extremely well by actor Bill Skarsgård in the new movie “IT”, is in fact a metaphor for bullying and this film very effectively explores where evil like this comes from correctly pointing out that all people who bully others actually feed on the fear in their victims. Bulling is about pure evil and people who bully others never think about retribution or about the short and long term damage they are inflicting on their victims. Bullies are all looking to temporarily escape their pain from abusive parents, self loathing for any number of reasons, by finding a victim who they can make feel much worse than they feel about themselves. Its a crime very unique to certain human beings and happens more in childhood, but it also happens when you are an adult and in the working world. As an adult we are bullied sometimes because we are afraid of losing our jobs, so we put up with abuse to make a living. Very often bullying as an adult is a game of leverage and as a result a tremendous amount of stress and anger occur. On the negative side, I thought some of the bullying scenes were too extreme to make the point the story was trying to make although it was effective in showing the fear, rage and anger bullying causes with the victims.

The horror scenes and special effects in this film were very well done but for my tastes sometimes too unnecessarily shocking and violent, especially in the beginning where a young boy has his arm cut off. The beginning of this movie concentrated a great deal on the young characters who are all victims of intense bullying in the high school they go to and its mostly towards the middle of the story that we see more scenes and visions of Pennywise. I thought that this strategy did establish the main message of this film very well.

I mostly agree with the high ratings from Rotten tomatoes and IMDB, 85% and 8.0 respectively and overall I thought that IT was a very good, but not great film that I do recommend.