The King’s Man

• Directed by Matthew Vaughn
• December 5, 2021 (London) / December 22, 2021 (US) / December 26, 2021 (UK)
• Based on The Secret Service by Mark Millar, Matthew Vaughn, and Dave Gibbons

During WWI the Kingsman agency is formed to defeat a group plotting to wipe out millions of people.

As a work of historical fiction and an expansion of The Kingsman universe, I was excited for The King’s Man though this and that conspired to keep me from viewing it for some time. A WWI spy-fi thriller in the vein of the classic James Bond sounded like an easy win to me. The first two films showed you could still make a fun spy movie rather than those of the emotionally crushing variety that are all the rage today.

Welp, The King’s Man is certainly not as fun as the previous films. It is really downbeat by opening near the end of the Second Boer War with a child getting to see his mom shot by a sniper. Fun times had by all.

There is a distinct anti-war tone in this movie along with sprinklings of anti-colonialism aimed at the British. Perhaps not improbable to mix both into a film series that has been more fun than dramatic but not easy to do as demonstrated here. Not by Matthew Vaughn anyway. Those moments when the message is being conveyed are painfully obvious and bring things to a stop. 

Unlike the first two this lacks a sense of straight up fun. I’m not wanting it to be a big goof if not a blatant comedy. Events were serious for the characters, but there was also a vibe of enjoyment with it for the viewer like the older Bond films. Serious yet silly. This doesn’t quite have that.

Perhaps that’s because the story moves between the seriousness of war and the absurdity of an independent spy organization. Such an idea doesn’t really pass the sniff test, but in the first two Kingsman movies they set up a world where it did. It is also constrained by shackling the narrative to real history. You cannot get much of a larf out of The Great War that was unlike anything that came before. As a prequel it is a bit constrained by coming before two already released films. It’s trying to adhere to anything preestablished but also do its own story.

The story between Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) and his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) was obviously supposed to be the emotional meat of the film but he’s just a generic kid in the context of wanting to runoff to war. While such instances did occur where people impersonated other people just to get into battle, with everything else going on it felt a little convoluted.

Gemma Arterton is a stunning woman and an acceptable actress but her character of Polly Watkins’s love of Orlando moves from playful flirtation though nothing happening to a big kiss and apparent relationship by the end with no path to how.

In real life Grigori Rasputin (here played by Rhys Ifans) was a colorful character and that’s putting it mildly. He has been transferred to film as a central villain enough times over the years. In The King’s Man he is one of the more interesting supporting characters but his presence amounts to one off adventure. He’s cannon fodder as are all the other one Bond-esque henchmen of the main villain.

Director Matthew Vaughn does a nice tease by never showing the villain’s face until the climax but by the time they do because of the confused nature of the film and the general laziness with which all the other henchmen characters are disposed of you just don’t care. Big whoop…

I went in with high hopes for The King’s Man but was pretty disappointed. Even though there are some good action sequences it lacks the enjoyment of the first two movies. It’s too hamstrung by real history, the film history it is established, and a desperate need to be about something rather than simply tell a good story.