Introduced to young readers in 2000’s Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz’s junior spy Alex Rider fills the literary gap left by the likes of JK Rowling and Lemony Snicket.

His escapades are equally outlandish but, unlike Master Potter and Count Olaf, he exists in the 'real' world (albeit on the same territory as another of Her Majesty's secret servants...).

With six Rider missions under his belt and counting, Horowitz wisely entrusts script duties for his teen hero's movie debut to himself. On the evidence of this, the franchise-owners can breathe easy.

At age 14, Alex (posh surf-dude Pettyfer) has had a busy life. Orphaned as an infant, he lives with his uncle Ian (McGregor) and their American housekeeper Jack (Silverstone, looking chunky).

Uncle Ian has a boring banking job keeps him away from home for ages. Alex feels let down, despite having been turned into an expert in foreign languages, mountaineering, abseiling, shooting, scuba-diving and karate.

But when the elder Rider is killed in a fishy-sounding 'accident' in Cornwall, Alex discovers that he was really one of MI6's top agents. Double-oh my!

What's more, plummy intelligence boss Blunt (Nighy) expects Alex to continue his uncle's investigation into the devious doings of US-born gazillionaire Darrius Sayle (Rourke, imagine a tanned Willy Wonka with blue eye-shadow).

The outwardly benevolent Sayle has given every school in the land one of his super-duper Stormbreaker computers. Sounds a bit military for an educational tool...

Alex is whisked away from London for training in tea and artillery at a Welsh special ops base before being plunged undercover into Sayle's hi-tech Cornish lair.

The rest is unadulterated, tenth-grade Bond. Alex grapples with goons, dangles off helicopters and skyscrapers, zips around by bicycle, horse and quad bike, and gets into a spot of bother with a deadly sea creature.

Even the characters taste of Broccoli, from ditzy Bond girl Silverstone and henchfolk Andy Serkis and Missi Pyle to Damian Lewis's Russian assassin and 'Q'-like toymaker Stephen Fry('QI', perhaps, given his TV show?).

So what if it copies like a classroom cheat? Any family wheeze that packs in this much action while thumbing its nose at Tony Blair is all right in my book. So nurr.

Elliott Noble