(Credits: 20th Century Fox)

Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle sees the return Taron Egerton and co in the second instalment of the comedy thriller franchise. Egerton’s back as street criminal turned secret agent Gary “Eggsy” Unwin. Only this time, an American intelligence agency is on board for the ride.

Whereas, the British Kingsman organisation takes its title and agent code names from the legendary myth of King Arthur and the knights of the Roundtable, its US equivalent Statesman is themed around alcoholic drinks. Fitting, since its headquarters masquerades as a bourbon whiskey distillery.

When the Kingsman headquarters in London is blown up by the leader of the global drug-trafficking syndicate the Golden Circle, surviving agents Eggsy and Merlin, played again by Mark Strong, must follow the “doomsday protocol”. That means enlisting the help of their American counterparts, whose location they identify at the bottom of a bottle of bourbon.

If this sounds a little far-fetched, it’s nothing on what comes next. Harry Hart, formerly Kingsman’s leading agent Galahad played by Colin Firth, is still alive. Somewhat improbably, he survived a gunshot to the head at point blank range from Samuel L Jackson. What’s more, in a plot thread lifted straight from the 2002 Secret Service sequel Men in Black II, he’s completely forgotten about his time in the intelligence industry. Except that unlike Tommy Lee Jones’ Agent K, who works as a postman, Firth’s character thinks he’s a butterfly expert.

With Hart out of action for the foreseeable future, Eggsy partners up with Statesman agent Whiskey, to penetrate the Golden Circle – literally. Their mission brief involves hooking up with a member of the cartel at Glastonbury music festival, in order to implant a tracking device into her body. At the moment of truth, we’re faced with a strangely gratuitous and painfully unfunny CGI close-up shot of the device travelling through the woman’s cervical cavity.

So Whiskey is with Kingsman?

Before they’re able to get any further, though, Golden Circle leader Poppy Adams appears on television to announce that she’s infected drug users around the world with a killer virus, the cure for which only she has access. She’ll only share it if an emergency decree from the US president fully decriminalises her operation. Otherwise, millions of people will die.

The president resolves to do nothing, declaring himself to have “just won the war on drugs” by letting millions of addicts die from the Golden Circle’s virus. Statesman agent Whiskey suggests that his organisation shouldn’t act either, telling his boss Champagne, “We can’t make this personal, sir.” This remark leads a newly reinvigorated Harry to believe he might be up to something.

Merlin’s distastefully implanted tracking device helps locate the laboratory where the cure for the virus is being manufactured. Eggsy, Harry, and Whiskey infiltrate it and take a sample of the antidote, which Whiskey pushes out of Eggsy’s hand under the guise of saving him from an enemy attack.  “I think he could be working for the other side,” Harry confides to Eggsy, before shooting Whiskey in the face.

Using the same technology that saved Harry’s life and returned his memory, Statesman effectively brings Whiskey back from the dead. By this point, Harry and Eggsy are on the way to the secret Cambodian lair of Poppy Adams, in the hope of forcing her to release the antidote to the virus. Just as they obtain the access code for the antidote and kill Adams off, Whiskey arrives to try and stop them.

“We’re all on the same side here,” Eggsy tells him naively. As it turns out, Whiskey’s on nobody’s side.

In fact, he’s out for himself, seeking to gain financially from the end of drug consumption the Golden Circle’s killer virus will bring about. “No more drug users. And the Statesman share price rockets,” he explains, referencing the agency’s commercial front as a distillery. It’s left to Harry and Eggsy to overcome him in one final showdown. And unite Kingsman and Statesman in a joint whisky venture thereafter.

You can’t fault Vaughn and his co-writer Jane Goldman for lack of creativity. But as much fun as Kingsman: The Golden Circle can be, it really is all over the shop. They could have done with putting their script through Poppy Adams’ human meat grinder, to mince it into shape.