After graduating from X-Men: First Class, director Matthew Vaughn returns to Kick-Ass territory — that is, adapting the gleefully profane work of comics’ enfant terrible Mark Millar — with Kingsman: The Secret Service. In theme and structure, it bears the buttoned-up look of TV’s The Avengers and the well-tailored derring-do of 007’s adventures … if John Steed and James Bond were keen on shooting puppies and penetrating anuses. (Caught off-guard? You had to be there.)

Looking like co-star Michael Caine in his Harry Palmer heyday, never-more-likable Colin Firth (2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) stands front and center as Harry Hart, a “knight” in the London-based spy organization Kingsman. Its gentleman operatives wear bulletproof suits and oxford shoes concealing poison-tipped blades, and they carry umbrellas that double as gun and shield. While on assignment in the Middle East in 1997, Hart makes a mistake that gets a colleague killed, so he vows to repay that debt to the dead man’s son.

Seventeen years later, that happens with the reformation of Eggsy Unwin (newcomer Taron Egerton), a hot-tempered juvenile delinquent whose street smarts Hart manipulates into secret-agent material, taking him from loser (his surname suggests as much: Unwin) to veritable princess magnet. Coinciding with the recruiting process is the nefarious rise of lisping tech entrepreneur Valentine Richmond (Samuel L. Jackson, Avengers: Age of Ultron), who with rapidity moves forward with his plan for world domination via mind control via SIM cards via free WiFi for life. (Looking at my most recent AT&T bill, I fully understand why the public would flock to such a strings-attached ruse.)

This being the start of an intended franchise, Vaughn spends much of the first hour laying the groundwork through the Kingsman org’s training sequences and unconventional tests of feats both physical and psychological. It’s not until hour two that the true plot kicks into gear. At 128 minutes, Kingsman is too long by a quarter, yet curiously, the movie is back-loaded with slam-bang. Until then, it cruises along on roguish charm without fully committing to tone; it failed to make much of an impression beyond my marveling at tailored clothing I can ill afford.

Not unexpectedly for viewers of Vaughn’s previous work — in particular, his 2004 debut, Layer Cake — the best scenes depend upon the jolt of pop music on the soundtrack; they even may have been built around the cuts. Although not necessarily for the right reasons, the showstopper is a church shootout in which nearly 100 God-fearing Kentuckians die graphically at Harry’s lightning-quick hands while Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” wails away. The intended effect is laughs — and they do come — but like that iconic Southern-rock tune, it just doesn’t know when to quit, thereby giving you time to recall real-life church massacres that aren’t funny at all. That somewhat sours one’s enjoyment of what essentially is a spoof of itself, but should we really be surprised? For all who have collaborated with Millar in his career thus far, restraint has not been among them. —Rod Lott

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