Stiff upper-lip sleuthing

KINGSMAN: The Secret Service is an energetic spy spoof that stands out in a crowded field with a cheeky combination of cool and crude and a storyline that has an aristocratic Brit in a bespoke suit and a stiff upper lip facing off against a comic-book villain with a loose lower lisp. The result is funny, edgy and inconsistent but above all else, this is a film with attitude to spare.

Matthew Vaughn has a penchant for mixing crude language, lightweight humour and hardcore action: he produced Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and directed Kick-Ass (2010). It's typically R-rated, excessive and pretty entertaining stuff. With Kingsman, which is based on a comic book by Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar and written by Vaughn and Jane Goldman, Vaughn takes aim at the more campy James Bond films of the past while also injecting elements of other spy-themed movies, taking inspiration from characters such as Jason Bourne and Austin Powers, and others in between.

"First and foremost, we are gentlemen," goes the credo by which the super-secret spy agency known as Kingsman is based. It is staffed by agents with codenames that reference King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, works out of a fake Savile Row storefront and dresses its members in spiffy tailored suits that are both bullet- and crease-proof - useful features whether mixing it up against garden variety thugs or villains of a more deadly nature.