I enjoyed this. It was far more comfortable, over all, than the first Kingsman film. Not that I remember that much of the first one. You don’t watch James Bond films to memorize their plot points, you watch them to go on a stylish thrill ride. And Kingsman is nothing if not a tribute to the James Bond films of Sean Connery and Roger Moore.

These films are hyper-violent. In the first one, there’s a seven-minute shootout in a church that goes beyond comic excess and is just uncomfortable. I had to look away. Although this one features a couple of encounters with a meat grinder, they’re over quickly and didn’t bring me the discomfort that the church scene did.

Halle Berry and Jeff Bridges are nice additions to the cast. Bruce Greenwood was a properly good ol’ boy villain as the President of the United States.

I have two complaints: First, some characters from last time out—one in particular—are ignobly written out of the franchise. They deserved better. Second, the film has three villains, and the biggest, nastiest comeuppance is saved for the least villainous, least interesting of them. He was a guy who did wrong, but he’s also given one of those “lost everything” reasons for turning bad. So he didn’t deserve what he got, while two other villains deserved exactly what he got, and they got a bit less.

Still, don’t think, just enjoy. That’s the secret.