Having done such sterling work on their jaw-dropping screen adaptation of Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass comic strip, director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jane Goldman enjoy more Millar-time with this typically boisterous hoodie-Bond fantasia. With nods to John Steed (the umbrella) and Harry Palmer (the glasses), this finds Taron Egerton’s “Eggsy” recruited by an elite super-spy unit of gentlemanly spooks who attempt to transform him from effing estate kid to Old Etonian killer in My Fair Lady fashion. Meanwhile, Samuel L Jackson’s lisping Dr Evil prepares for global domination via the distribution of mobile phones through which he intends to zombify an all-too-eager population.

Independently funded, like Kick-Ass, and thus sidestepping studio squeamishness, Kingsman boasts an already infamous church-house meltdown in which Colin Firth goes mano a mano with an entire congregation. Elsewhere, comically bisected bodies and ruthless shoot-the-dog displays are the order of the day, as Egerton transforms from layabout to slayabout. For the most part it’s brash, boisterous fare, cocking unsubtle snooks at its generic predecessors, not least in a poster image that subverts the leggy chauvinism of For Your Eyes Only with a killer close-up of razor-sharp running blades. A shame, then, that the film should succumb to leering laddish humour, closing on an unforgivable bum note.