Starring Colin Firth, Mark Hamill, Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson, Jack Davenport; directed by Matthew Vaughn; 129 minutes; R for sequences of strong violence, language and some sexual content.

The Spy Who Amused Me, James Bond, has abdicated that title. That’s the gap the Mark Millar/Dave Gibbons comic “The Secret Service” leaped into, and it’s territory that feels most at home in the film from that comic, “Kingsman: The Secret Service.”

Often, it’s a droll riff on spy movies and what “makes a gentleman” – fine tailored (bespoke) suits and the clash of classes evident by the posh accents the movies so often attach to British secret agents.

But almost as often, it’s an atonal, hyper-violent action comedy that goes on too long, tries far too hard, spills far too much blood and relies more than it should on Samuel L. Jackson’s character’s lisp for laughs.

A super secret spy agency, privately financed, is run out of a British tailor’s shop. They’re not numbered, MI-6 style, but given names from Camelot – Lancelot, Galahad, Arthur. When one of their number is killed, Galahad (Colin Firth) gives a medal to the fallen man’s son, promising him one big “favor.” If the kid, who grows up street tough, bullied in a troubled home, ever finds himself in over his head, call this phone number. The “service” will get him out of his fix. That’s how Eggsy, played by Taron Egerton, falls in with the men of Kingsman. Samuel L. shows up as a billionaire environmental activist, wearing a grin, an assortment of NY Yankees hats (worn askew) and a speech impediment.”Tho thorry you had to deal with this . unpleathanneth!”

Roger Moore, Tribune News Service

Colin Firth stars in “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.