The King’s Man (2021) 20th Century/Action-Adventure-Comedy RT: 131 minutes Rated R (sequences of strong bloody violence, language, some sexual material) Director: Matthew Vaughn Screenplay: Matthew Vaughn and Karl Gajdusek Music: Matthew Margeson and Dominic Lewis Cinematography: Ben Davis Release date: December 22, 2021 (US) Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Djimon Hounsou, Harris Dickinson, Rhys Ifans, Tom Hollander, Matthew Goode, Charles Dance, Daniel Bruhl, Valerie Pachner, Ian Kelly, Alexandra Maria Lara, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Aaron Vodovoz, Todd Boyce, Branka Katic, Olivier Richters, Stanley Tucci. Box Office: $37.2M (US)/$126M (World)
Rating: ** ½
I like The King’s Man. It’s entertaining enough. It’s definitely better than the new Matrix movie. It’s an odd duck though. Let me explain what I mean.
The King’s Man is an origin movie. A prequel to Kingsman: The Secret Service and Kingsman: The Golden Circle, it tells the story of the founding of the clandestine British intelligence agency that operates out of a tailor shop. Okay, fine; the story needed to be told. One of the defining traits of the series is the zany, tongue-in-cheek approach director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) takes to the material. He’s essentially goofing on the spy genre. None of it is meant to be taken seriously.
This is where things get dicey for The King’s Man. The plot is just as ludicrous as the others, possibly even more so. It’s enjoyable when it stays with the goofy action aesthetic of its predecessors. Sadly, it doesn’t do it enough. Far more often than fans would like, it veers off into more serious territory. In addition to entertaining audiences, it also wants to hit them with stone-cold sober statements about politics, colonialism, pacifism and the human cost of war. This tonal inconsistence makes for a noticeably uneven ride. So it is that The King’s Man is a little less fun than the others.
Conspiracy buffs should appreciate the plot of The King’s Man. The basic idea is that WWI was engineered by a group of villains set on destroying England. The leader is a chap referred to as “The Shepherd”. We see him only from behind until the final ten minutes, but by then we have a pretty good idea of who he is. In the middle of the mayhem, we find Duke Orlando Oxford (Fiennes, No Time to Die) staying out of it. He’s focused on protecting his son Conrad (Dickinson, Trust) from the world. As a child, he witnessed the killing of his mother at a Boer concentration camp in Africa. Since then, his dad keeps him on a short leash. He refuses to allow him to enlist when war breaks out. When Conrad finally does sign up, Dad uses his connections to keep him off the front lines.
ANYWAY, somebody is bent on bringing down England. He has a band of co-conspirators that include the mad Russian monk Rasputin (Ifans, Spider-Man: No Way Home) and the fellow who assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand, one of the main causes of WWI. The depiction of Rasputin is one of the few instances of true zaniness in The King’s Man. It’s an exaggerated characterization that feels right at home within the construct of the series. He has this one weird scene where he has Oxford remove his trousers so he can cure an old leg wound by licking it. Thankfully, it’s followed by a big fight scene in which members of the Duke’s tight inner circle come to his aid. They would be two of his most trusted servants, nanny Polly (Arterton, Quantum of Solace) and butler Shola (Hounsou, Guardians of the Galaxy). It turns out they’re part of a larger spy network comprised of household servants of the rich and elite from all over the world. Who better to spy on white men of privilege than those who can hide in plain sight? That’s actually a good idea, one worthy of its own movie.
Although I enjoyed The King’s Man overall, I had difficulty reconciling the fun with the serious stuff. It gets downright grim at time. There’s an extended scene in the trenches of a battleground that feels more like an outtake from 1917. Thankfully, the movie redeems itself with a cool cliffside finale that involves Oxford parachuting from a plane. There’s also plenty of fighting and shooting. Scenes like this are well done. This is what the fans really want to see. They’re not looking for a commentary on matters best confined to college classrooms and lecture halls.
The acting in The King’s Man isn’t bad at all. Hats off to triple threat Tom Hollander (Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3) for playing real-life cousins King George, Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas. He does a good job in all three roles. Fiennes proves he’s a great main player. Arterton is delightfully cheeky as Polly who can handle a gun as well as a tea tray (maybe better). Ifans hams it to the skies as Rasputin, a wild man with a huge appetite for food, sex and violence.
While fun, the screenplay is a bit of a mess with plot elements scattered everywhere. One involves President Woodrow Wilson (Kelly) being blackmailed by the bad guys to stay out of the war. If you sit there and try to make sense of it all, don’t bother. It’s not going to happen. The best thing to do with The King’s Man is to just sit back and let it happen. It’s not the smoothest ride in the world, but it’s enjoyable if you lower your expectations. No, it’s nowhere near as good as the others. Vaughn doesn’t seem to know what to do with this one. As a period piece, it doesn’t completely succeed due to CGI effects that look out of place in early 20th century settings. Still, it could have been worse. At least it’s not an overblown, overlong bore like a certain other sequel released on the same day.
