SHAKEN

Lashings of sex, violence and drugs, but the return of this Bond spoof is glorious fun

Kingsman: The Golden Circle (15)

Verdict: High-octane sequel hits the target

Kingsman: The golden Circle hits the ground running with a Keystone Kops car chase involving a black cab, a robotic arm and a rocket launcher.

as you’d expect from this unapologetic celebration of British style, the good guy is in the black cab — at least, i think it’s a cab. at one point it turns into a submarine. not so much an Uber as a scuba.

Bond aficionados will recognise the submersible as a nod to Roger moore’s Lotus Esprit s1 in The spy Who Loved me.

Kingsman: The golden Circle, the first in what promises to be a long line of sequels, is both a homage to Britain’s most successful film franchise and a bold attempt to recover some of its fizz.

Eggsy, the central character played by Taron Egerton, is a cross between David niven in Casino Royale and michael Caine in The ipcress File, and his irrepressible, cheeky chappie persona infuses proceedings.

it’s like a Bond film remade by the team behind Lock, stock and Two smoking Barrels, with more swearing and better jokes. it’s also patriotic in a way that feels more in keeping with ian Fleming’s original novels than the latest crop of Bond movies.

The picture boasts an allstar cast, but a fair number of them get dispatched in the first ten minutes when a drug cartel launches a sneak attack. For those who missed the first outing, the Kingsmen are a group of smooth, umbrella-carrying spies, answerable to their own chivalric code rather than the Prime minister. Like director matthew Vaughn’s other successful franchise — the Kick-ass films — the idea came from a comic book created by mark millar, who is quickly becoming Britain’s answer to stan Lee, the brains behind the marvel empire. The only survivors of the attack are Eggsy and merlin, the Q-like character played by mark strong. soon, they’ve found their way to a bourbon whiskey distillery in Kentucky and linked up with their american counterparts — the statesmen. This is an excuse to unveil another host of stars, including Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges and Halle Berry, who is slightly wasted in the role of the faithful techie — a staple in such action blockbusters.

some of the best scenes are set in the villain’s secret lair, Poppyland in Cambodia, where Poppy — the head of the drug cartel (played with scenerychewing relish by Julianne moore) — has created a Fifties american town that looks like a recycled set from Back To The Future.

she holds court in the diner where she’s guarded by two robotic dogs and feeds her under-performing henchmen into a giant meat-grinder.

One of the unexpected treats is a cameo by sir Elton John, who’s being held captive in Poppyland and forced to perform his seventies hits before an audience of bored drug kingpins. He delivers a