“Kingsman: The Golden Circle” is a follow-up to “Kingsman: The Secret Service”. That movie was a fresh take on spy movies in general, and James Bond type movies in specific. The English upper crust non-government spy group called ‘Kingsman’ was a fun but violent wild ride. The characters and the organization were displayed in detail. ‘Manners Maketh Man’ was the catch phrase that meant the bad guys would be brought down hard, but with wit and in debonair style. Oxfords only, please…

Now in the new sequel movie, the “Golden Circle” can only bring home the Bronze. In the first one, Eggsy (Taron Egerton) was brought in to the group by long-time agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth). Unfortunately, Harry was shot in the head in the first movie and is assumed dead. The special tech support agent named Merlin (Mark Strong) still helps Eggsy on his missions. But a new bad guy is afoot. A washed-out recruit (from the first movie) named Charlie (Edward Holcroft) is working for a drug cartel leader. Charlie attacks Eggsy and nearly kills him. Charlie has a mechanical arm that makes him super strong.

The new evil drug lord in named Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore) and she is taking over all drug distribution world wide. But her evil plan is to taint the drugs with a potion that will eventually kill all the users. She will blackmail all world leaders to pay her a ransom for the antidote. But first she eliminated all the Kingsman facilities. Only Eggsy and Merlin are left alive. They only have one option – they must contact the fraternal organization in the United States – the Statesman.

The Statesmen finally figure out that Eggsy and Merlin are OK, so they decide to help them out. But they also find the Statesman have been holding Harry Hart, who is alive but without any memories. The agents in Statesmen, led by Champ (Jeff Bridges), are Agent Tequila (Channing Tatum), Agent Whiskey (Pedro Pascal) and the technical support agent Ginger (Halle Berry). They reconnect Eggsy with Harry, but Harry does not know anything about Kingsman. But when Poppy has threatened the entire world into paying ransom, the remaining Kingsman and Statesman must band together for a united attack against her.

The action moves fast and in (golden) circles all over the globe. Firs, Eggsy goes to a music concert in England, to chase down Charlie’s ex-girlfriend. Then to the French Alps, to a secret location to find where the antidote is being made. And back and forth to England and to the U.S. to check up on things. And then to Cambodia to locate Poppy Adams in her secluded jungle hideout. Did I mention that she is also keeping Elton John hostage for some reason? Yes, the action set pieces are very much on target, but the ping-pong, crisscross of back and forth in the world gets in the way.

“Kingsman: The Golden Circle” is still a fair spy movie, but it does not have any of the fresh ideas of the first movie. It works around getting the main character (Harry Hart) killed in the first one by some oddball mumbo-medical-jumbo. The movie has the same weird demeaning attitude to women as the first one does. There are very limited motivations for why Poppy is so bad and evil, and why she still thinks she is stuck in the ’50s. There is more screen time for Elton John than there is for Jeff Bridges. Now who thought that would be a good idea?

The things that the movies get right are the action sequences. They are shot in a way that the camera shows in a very way fluid manner what is going on and where everybody is. That is much better than most shaky-cam shots in other movies, where the editing shows nothing about what is happening. The idea to have the U.S Statesman use the cover of a distillery is clever. The Kingsman cover was an upscale tailor shop in London, but you can’t take a drinking tour of a tailor shop…

All of the acting is at a pretty high quality level. The standout would be Pedro Pascal who is fantastic. He would be the perfect pick to star in a biographical movie about Burt Reynolds! Julianne Moore plays a bit over-the-top as Poppy, but that is her character. The ones who get so little screen time are Halle Berry, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges. They might have been played by just about anyone. Colin Firth and Taron Egerton also bring their ‘A’ game.

So, it is not as good as the first, it runs a little too long, and the locations are too scattered. But the acting is solid, and action parts are off-the-wall quality stuff. The result is that the “Golden Circle” can only bring home the Bronze, it does not deserve the Gold, or even the Silver.