Kingsman: The Golden Circle is the highly-anticipated sequel to Kingsman: The Secret Service from 2015. Secret Service was a satire of campy Bond films with a perfect cast, gut-busting humor and stylish action. The sequel meets expectations, delivering a fun-but-flawed spy film, with good action and humor.

The Golden Circle finds the Kingsmen having to work together with the American spy agency “The Statesmen” to stop the villain, Poppy Adams, and save the world.  The plot is purposely ridiculous and lacks focus for the first half hour, however this is soon corrected.

Much of the cast from the first movie returns. Taron Edgerton (Sing) returns as Eggsy and Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) returns as Harry Hart. The actors manage to keep their characters engaging while delivering some very bad dialogue.

The movie introduces new faces to the Kingsmen universe as well, like Channing Tatum (21 Jump Street), who plays Agent Tequila from The Statesmen. Unfortunately, the movie squanders this cameo since the character rarely appears. Other notable cameos come from Pedro Pascal (Narcos), Halle Berry (X Men) and Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski). They all work well in their roles, but it would’ve been nice to see a bit more of them.

The main reason to watch a movie like the Kingsman is for the action, and The Golden Circle has great action. It is full of car chases, fist fights, and shoot outs. The action is purposefully over the top and incredibly entertaining to watch. The action is fast paced, yet easily followed, differentiating the film from many of its contemporaries. With this movie under his belt, Matthew Vaughn cements himself as one of the best action directors working today.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle isn’t perfect, most notably because of weak dialogue and some pacing issues, but it is a blast from start to finish. If you’re looking for an entertaining action flick, or parody of the action genre in general, The Golden Circle is worth your time.

Score 7/10