Kingsman: The Secret Service (15)

four stars

Dir: Matthew Vaughn

With: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Samuel L Jackson

Runtime: 129 minutes

IN 2011, Colin Firth starred as gentleman spy Bill Haydon in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Four years on, he dons the dapper threads of gentleman spy Harry Hart in Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman: The Secret Service. Any further resemblance between the two pictures would not just be purely coincidental but, in the words of one of the tunes from the Kingsman soundtrack, Bonkers.

That this adaptation of the Mark Millar comic book even has a banging soundtrack (as the young folk might say), should be confirmation enough that on the spy movie spectrum, Kingsman sits closer to Roger Moore than John le Carre. Actually, make that Alan Partridge playing Roger Moore playing Bond. In short, it is heroically daft, hugely violent, but slickly made and a lot of fun, the kind of movie that puts the pop culture into popcorn.

As confirmation that the audience should not fear becoming lost in the depths of geopolitical goings-on, the film opens in "The Middle East" - yes, that specific - in 1997. In a scenario cunningly made to look like a video game, a group of secret agents are interrogating some "Middle East" type. The operation does not go well, leaving the Kingsman organisation - named after the Savile Row tailors which functions as its public front - in debt to the son and wife of one of its members. If ever they are in trouble one phone call will summon help.

Years later, the fatherless boy, Eggsy (Taron Egerton) calls in the favour and finds himself in contact with Hart and Kingsman, led by Michael Caine. From there, it is but a hop, skip and parachute jump into training and taking on a megalomaniac internet billionaire (is there any other kind these days?) in the shape of Valentine (a lisping Samuel L Jackson) and his blade-runner sidekick Gazelle (Sofia Boutella).

In the gaps between the crash, bang and wallops of comic book violence, Vaughn, in the spirit of Millar's graphic novel, manages to weave in some digs about class, the importance of father figures, and how the modern spy movie, occasionally being more of an exercise in navel-gazing than throat punching, is in danger of boring the audience to death. Kingsman, to borrow a line from the picture, is definitely, and defiantly, not that sort of movie.

The screenplay is by Vaughn and Jane Goldman, who made the first Kick-Ass together and Stardust. Theirs is a cheeky chappy-chappess pairing that quietly, but more often loudly, subverts preconceived notions, as in the conversation where Hart cues up the coming transformation of Eggsy with the line, "Have you seen Trading Places?" only to have his image of the lad confounded.

The picture in general takes the same tack. You may think this is silly stuff, the thinking seems to go, and it certainly is, but how about this zinger of a line or plot twist? In the best traditions of the comic books from which it hails, Kingsman is knowing without seeming know-it-all, perceptive without being patronising.

That said, the film is not above straying into naffness. The dialogue is beyond cornball at times, and the ending, especially, is designed to provoke in the same way that the dropping of the C-bomb in Kick-Ass did. But when these things happen it is not long before with one bound, one smart line or on the money soundtrack choice, the picture is forgiven and is free again to be pure entertainment.

The cast, giving the audience their cue, look as though they are having fun. Firth finally rips off the wet shirt of Darcydom and shows himself to be a kick-ass action hero to be reckoned with, Caine is excellent value as the canny M figure, and Egerton has all the makings of a new British star along the lines of a young James McAvoy. It is Mark Strong, though, who stealthily steals the picture as Merlin, the straight-talking Scotsman who is the backbone of the Kingsman organisation. As Partridge playing Moore might say, back of the net.