Kingsman: The Golden Circle (15), Three stars

Dir: Matthew Vaughn

With: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Mark Strong

Runtime: 141 minutes

THOUGH there are a fair few members of Hollywood royalty in this second instalment in the Kingsman franchise, Scots comic book writer Mark Millar’s secret service caper remains a quintessentially British affair.

Not so much for the London setting, the British actors supping martinis, or the Savile Row tailoring that forms an essential part of the tale. What puts the mark of modern Blighty on Kingsman: The Golden Circle is its 24 carat naffness, a quality that is occasionally its saving grace, but is more often than not its undoing.

The first film, 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, introduced Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a London council estate kid whose lineage entitles him to membership of Kingsman, an “independent intelligence agency”. Suited and booted and trained by agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth), Eggsy was turned, Cinderella-style, into a dapper young gent licensed to kill. Think Jason Bourne with a hefty dose of the Norman Wisdoms.

Those lethal skills of Eggsy’s come in handy as The Golden Circle, with Matthew Vaughn again in the director’s chair, begins. Within five minutes there have been multiple attempts to splatter Eggsy all over the pavement, all of which he manages to shrug off – with considerable help from lashings of CGI – and get to his girlfriend’s in time for dinner with her parents. Just another hectic evening in the life of a young agent, or the harbinger of worse to come? Daft question.

From London, the action transfers to Cambodia, where a drug cartel head called Poppy (for the avoidance of doubt, subtlety is not Kingsman’s USP), played by Julianne Moore, is hatching a cunning plan that will test the British organisation to the limits, and force it to call on its American equivalent, Statesman, for help.

Almost every franchise goes on the road at some point. It is a way of shaking things up, bringing in fresh blood, and in the case of The Golden Circle, hiring big names that will hopefully distract the audience’s attention away from a story that is as weak as a day old kitten. Speaking of darling little creatures, it is a sure sign that a film is in trouble and reaching for the emergency rations when a puppy is brought into proceedings. The Golden Circle has two.

But if you can forget all that, here is Channing Tatum playing a big lug of a US agent, Jeff Bridges as Statesman’s head honcho, Halle Berry as a tech whizz, and don’t forget Moore, whose small town America-themed compound includes a very special guest. I won’t spoil the fun and reveal who he is, largely because the old darling, overacting like a wild man, proves quite the funniest thing in this slog of a film.

Otherwise, naffness, for good and ill, reigns. At one particularly low point the screenplay by Vaughan and his co-writer Jane Goldman (Stardust, Kick-Ass) goes swiftly from tiresomely laddish to depressingly lewd. As a rule, women in the Kingsman world are either princesses (literally in the case of Eggsy’s Swedish girlfriend), cackling madwomen, spectacles-wearing nerds, or otherwise not to be trusted. Guys, guys, guys, and Ms Goldman: heaven knows we’ve given up expecting de Beauvoir, but a notch above Benny Hill would be nice.

Vaughn is more impressive in the action sequences, one of which has transferred almost blow for blow from the first movie. Egerton, too, is right at home with the mayhem, with Vaughn’s penchant for slo-mo, Matrix-style shots picking out his leading man’s winning way with scissor kicks and precision punching. As in the first film, the action is razor cut to a poptastic soundtrack that moseys nicely from John Denver’s Country Roads to a country remix of Cameo’s Word Up and most points in between.

It is a huge ask, but if you can look past the crassness and the criminally long running time of 141 minutes, The Golden Circle has its charms, chief among them Mark Strong as a Scots techie, the always great value Channing, and Ms Moore. At least she can be relied upon to always stay classy.