LONDON — The British director and producer Matthew Vaughn and the screenwriter Jane Goldman have worked together on several film projects, beginning with “Stardust” in 2007 and including their newest, “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” which opens in the United States on Feb. 13. “We’ve written five and a half things, and they have all actually been made into films,” Mr. Vaughn said proudly. (The half refers to “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” which Mr. Vaughn was hired to direct but ultimately didn’t; the two received story credit.)

“It’s weirdly unusual,” Ms. Goldman added. “Which actually describes us.”

Weirdly unusual or no, Mr. Vaughn and Ms. Goldman seem to have a particularly harmonious taste for surreal ultraviolence that is often disturbingly funny and that has earned them a fair share of controversy (especially when they cast an 11-year-old Chloë Grace Moretz as a lethal schoolgirl in their “Kick-Ass,” from 2010). They also share a love for old British spy characters, encompassing James Bond and Austin Powers, evident in “X-Men: First Class” (2011), and at the forefront in “Kingsman,” a spy spoof, based on a comic book series by Mark Millar that is also a homage to the venerable tradition of dapper men who never spill a vintage whisky while dispatching a foe.

In “Kingsman,” a youth from public housing named Eggsy (Taron Egerton), is recruited by Harry Hart, a suave secret agent played, obviously, by Colin Firth. (“The French have wine, the Germans have cars, we have Colin Firth,” wrote Stuart Jeffries in an article about the film in The Guardian that asked, “Why must British spies be so posh?”) Hart is straight out of the Classic British Spy handbook, complete with bespoke tailored suit, bulletproof umbrella and a neat line in slinging a beer glass. As Eggsy is tested to see whether he is worthy of Kingsman, an independent international secret service (will he make it, or will the posh boys prevail?), Hart and his colleagues try to unravel the evil plans of a Bond-worthy villain with a Bond-worthy name: Richmond Valentine.