“Nowadays they’re all a little serious for my taste,” Colin Firth’s agent Harry Hart tells Samuel L Jackson’s hilarious, weak-stomached supervillain Valentine about modern spy films.

“Give me a far-fetched theatrical plot any day.”

And that’s just what Kingsman does.

James Bond may have gone hard in one direction but Kingsman - The Secret Service is like what could have happened if it had steered firmly the other.

Director Matthew Vaughn (who directed Daniel Craig in both of their break-outs, Layer Cake) dials up the violence and wise-cracking with preposterous plot, outrageous gadgets and prim gentlemen spies.

News Shopper:

Tech billionaire Valentine is hell-bent on global destruction and the Kingsmen – an independent secret service run from a Savile Row tailor’s – are out to stop them.

Added into the mix is Taron Egerton as Eggsy, a Millwall fan from a council estate, whose father was recruited by Hart to be one of the Kingsmen but died during training.

Now he’s on a mission to get accepted into the service, which has a decidedly stiff upper lip approach and rigorous selection process.

Without strong central performances, Kingsman – whose fish out of water premise of ‘chav joins secret service and saves world’ threatens to underwhelm - could have fallen very flat indeed.

Credit then, to Taron Egerton who dazzles in his first leading role.

The character demands he walk a line between leading action man and hoodlum with necessary humour, grit and a little emotional depth. He pulls it off wonderfully.

Of course Colin Firth is accomplished as a gentleman spy, he’s accomplished as a gentleman anything. But still, he surprises and delights.

He’s a natural at the Roger Moore-style patter and also as the father figure, but you’ll take the most perverse pleasure from watching the guy from Bridget Jones and The King’s Speech driving the barrel of a gun into a worshipper’s eye socket during a massacre in a church.

Yep, you read that right – the words ‘pleasure’ in the same sentence as ‘massacre in a church’.

News Shopper:

Michael Caine plays Arthur, the head of the Kingsmen

Obviously, this film is not for everyone.

Matthew Vaughn and his screenwriting buddy Jane Goldman (Stardust) have done the same thing with spy movies as they did when they turned superhero movies into ultraviolent fun in Kick Ass.

Again, it’s a comic book adaptation and is a homage to the genre as much as a dig.

Cliches are celebrated – there are gadgets, a villain in a mountain lair and there’s a femme fatale with deadly bladerunner legs – as well as burst.

While the violence is mega and the body count sky-high, it’s comic booky and virtually bloodless – making it a hoot.

Said church massacre is creatively brutal, frenetic and set to the guitar solo from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird. Similarly, a series of exploding heads goes off like fireworks to Land of Hope and Glory.

With several laugh-out-loud moments in a tight and quotable script, Kingsman tongue-in-cheek, violent and outrageously fun.

FOUR out of five stars.

Kingsman - The Secret Service (15) is out January 29