{"id":9868,"date":"2024-12-10T23:25:37","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9868"},"modified":"2024-12-10T23:25:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:25:37","slug":"the-kings-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/10\/the-kings-man\/","title":{"rendered":"The King\u2019s Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The King\u2019s Man<\/strong> (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th<\/sup> Century\/Action-Adventure-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 131 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (sequences of strong bloody violence, language, some sexual material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Matthew Vaughn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Matthew Vaughn and Karl Gajdusek\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Matthew Margeson and Dominic Lewis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ben Davis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 22, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $37.2M (US)\/$126M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0I like The King\u2019s Man<\/strong>. It\u2019s entertaining enough. It\u2019s definitely better than the new Matrix movie. It\u2019s an odd duck though. Let me explain what I mean.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The King\u2019s Man<\/strong> 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\u2019s essentially goofing on the spy genre. None of it is meant to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is where things get dicey for The King\u2019s Man<\/strong>. The plot is just as ludicrous as the others, possibly even more so. It\u2019s enjoyable when it stays with the goofy action aesthetic of its predecessors. Sadly, it doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s Man<\/strong> is a little less fun than the others.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Conspiracy buffs should appreciate the plot of The King\u2019s Man<\/strong>. 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 \u201cThe Shepherd\u201d. 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0ANYWAY, 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\u2019s Man<\/strong>. It\u2019s 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\u2019s followed by a big fight scene in which members of the Duke\u2019s 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\u2019re 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\u2019s actually a good idea, one worthy of its own movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Although I enjoyed The King\u2019s Man<\/strong> overall, I had difficulty reconciling the fun with the serious stuff. It gets downright grim at time. There\u2019s 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\u2019s also plenty of fighting and shooting. Scenes like this are well done. This is what the fans really want to see. They\u2019re not looking for a commentary on matters best confined to college classrooms and lecture halls.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting in The King\u2019s Man<\/strong> isn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While 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\u2019t bother. It\u2019s not going to happen. The best thing to do with The King\u2019s Man<\/strong> is to just sit back and let it happen. It\u2019s not the smoothest ride in the world, but it\u2019s enjoyable if you lower your expectations. No, it\u2019s nowhere near as good as the others. Vaughn doesn\u2019t seem to know what to do with this one. As a period piece, it doesn\u2019t completely succeed due to CGI effects that look out of place in early 20th<\/sup> century settings. Still, it could have been worse. At least it\u2019s not an overblown, overlong bore like a certain other sequel released on the same day.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The King\u2019s Man (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century\/Action-Adventure-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 131 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (sequences of strong bloody violence, language, some sexual material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Matthew Vaughn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Matthew Vaughn and Karl Gajdusek\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Matthew Margeson and Dominic Lewis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ben Davis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 22, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Djimon Hounsou, Harris Dickinson, Rhys Ifans, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/The-Kings-Man-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9868"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10169,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9868\/revisions\/10169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}