Another Bond pastiche from Matthew Vaughn, and once again it’s worse than the last one. Here we have what is basically another Kingsman film, but this time it’s made for the wine moms who had found their new favorite film with _The Lost City_. The plot is quite bonkers, it's so dense and the amount of schlocky plot twists indicate that Vaughn’s at least somewhat aware of how tasteless it all is. Sometimes you can still find traces of the cleverness you’d expect from him, but generally it favours being loud and cringe. I understand that he’s targeting a different demographic here than with Kingsman, but the end result is so tame and commercial that it feels more like typical streaming filler (_Red Notice, Ghosted_). Some of the acting is atrocious. Obviously Rockwell puts in the best work, but it doesn’t make up for the stiff performances by Cavill, Howard and Lipa (though she gets a pass for being Dua Lipa). The directing is also noticeably a step down compared to Vaughn’s previous stuff. It doesn’t feel like he put much heart and soul in this, because besides some good stuntwork it looks like shit. There’s just so much plastic sheen (artificial bright lighting, tacky CGI, unnatural compositions and camera movement) that it becomes incredibly ugly to look at. You could pass that off as ‘well it’s meant to be cartoonish’, but I’m not going to make that leap when there’s this little artistry to it. Vaughn needs to stop making these, the whole thing feels predictable and played out.

2.5/10