Kingsman: The Secret Service

Kingsman: The Secret Service could well be the most fun you'll have at the cinema this year, it could even go down as 2015's Guardians of the Galaxy.

Matthew Vaughn here takes apart the spy genre and remoulds it in his own image, much as he did with the brilliant Kick-Ass and it's reworking of the superhero genre.

He again casts big name actors (Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson and Mark Strong) in smaller roles to his new lead man Taron Egerton (whose career will surely now take off much like Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Chloe-Grace Moretz after Kick-Ass) but everyone here is on top form.

Brilliantly funny and perfectly violent the Bond producers might well be having some frantic board meetings about the upcoming Spectre after watching this.

The soundtrack is amazing (the Freebird guitar solo sequence is out of this world) and Vaughn brings a virtuoso performance out of Colin Firth, freed from typecasting and clearly having the time of his life.

Tying into the real world and with it's own social message for the youth of today (although escaping from 'the life' probably won't involve saving the world and sleeping with Swedish princesses).

Samuel L. Jackson's villain is a perfect post-modern character; a billionaire businessman trying to 'save the natural world' by culling the 'virus population.'

He's even afraid of blood and is suitably horrified when forced to make a kill himself.

All the Bond touches are there (a Q gadget scene, poison pens and, yes, a knife in a shoe) and it's just oh-so British; suits and quiffs abound, all spies carry umbrellas and wear Harry Palmer glasses, even the classic Bond car is replaced by a London taxi.

Put simply it's a must-see my only two criticisms being a lack of celebrity cameos (after so much talk about them disappearing) and a massive missed joke opportunity when Colin Firth is sent to a party under an alias (surely he should have been himself at this point?!).

It's better than Kick-Ass and that's saying a lot.

5 stars *****