Tedious prequel The King’s Man lacks the violent fun of its spy-movie predecessors
Ralph Fiennes is a reluctant badass in this uninspired, long-delayed entry in the Kingsman franchise
Film Reviews The King
Say what you will about Kingsman: The Secret Service, but at least Matthew Vaughn’s hyperviolent, cartoonish spy pastiche had a sense of fun to go with its Mark Millar-inspired liberal-baiting, offering up all of the staple pleasures of a James Bond movie (gadgets, suits, production design excess, bizarre henchpeople, megalomaniacs with goofy master plans, etc.) without the dour pseudo-realism that came to define much of the Daniel Craig era. The sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, delivered more of the same with diminishing returns: It was longer, louder, dumber, more ludicrous, and also something of a reactionary mess.
The Golden Circle’s structural and pacing issues are only exacerbated in The King’s Man, a tedious early-20th-century-set prequel that unsuccessfully attempts to resurrect the mishmashed imperialist, monarchist fantasies of an earlier era with a contemporary gloss. It is Kingsman without the namesake ingredient (the bespoke “independent” intelligence agency of the previous films is still just a London tailor shop); without the pop culture, sex jokes, or high-tech gizmos; without Colin Firth.
Instead, the job of classing up the material falls on Ralph Fiennes, a perverse choice for the role of the reluctant badass action-hero spy. He plays the Duke of Oxford, an English aristocrat and decorated colonial veteran who swears off war for good after his wife is killed by the bullet of a devious Boer. With the help of loyal servants Shola (Djimon Hounsou) and Polly (Gemma Arterton), he has raised a son, Conrad (Harris Dickinson), who is skilled in the fighting arts and eager to join the military, despite the disapproval of his dad. As it happens, the year is 1914, and a shadowy, Blofeldian villain has assembled an international conspiracy of malefactors—among them Grigori Rasputin, Mata Hari, Gavrilo Princip, and even Vladimir Lenin—to plunge Europe into a War To End All Wars and sow worldwide disorder.
Will Oxford, who has all the right skills for the cloak-and-dagger business, be able to stop them? No, not really: World War I still happens. Though ostensibly an action comedy, The King’s Man takes almost an hour to reach its first real action set piece, and little that occurs in that time can be called funny. (Unless, of course, one considers a Scotsman calling someone “fuckstick” to be the height of comedy.) Instead, the film’s long opening act plays like a misplaced jumble of intrigues mixed with stultifying father-son drama, Bad History, and monologues about the importance of noblesse oblige. Various historical figures make cameos; Oxford’s commitment to pacifism is tested; the plot lurches in different directions. The film’s one good history joke—the casting of Tom Hollander in the triple role of King George V, Tsar Nicholas II, and Kaiser Wilhelm II—turns out to be a squandered stunt; a scene in which a horny, bisexual Rasputin (Rhys Ifans) tongues the pantsless Oxford’s war wound plays like a bizarre tribute to David Cronenberg’s Crash.
One almost wishes that the entire film had the bad taste (no wordplay intended) of the Rasputin sequence, an overlong chunk of the film that climaxes with the unkempt Russian mystic fighting Oxford, Conrad, and Shola with the help of killer dance moves. (The Russians—they love ballet!) For the most part, Vaughn’s slick, flashy direction, with its match cuts and baroque VFX transitions, is wasted on a boring script that presumes too much about the audience’s emotional investment in the characters (none of whom are as engaging as those of the previous films). Gleeful, gruesome violence has been one of the more memorable aspects of the Kingsman movies; one is sad to say that, outside of a grungy, late-in-the-film battle royale in a World War I no-man’s-land, there just isn’t enough of it here.
That leaves the film’s old-school conservative pop history. While The King’s Man appears to be thumbing its nose at the historical record, its true stock-in-trade is a mythology that it is more or less impossible to separate from its century-old origins in right-wing ideology; the script even manages to bring in some aspects of the “stab in the back” legend of Germany’s involvement and defeat in the Great War. The difference is that Vaughn’s international conspiracy is not being masterminded by Jews, Jesuits, or the Illuminati, but by a raving Scottish nationalist who has orchestrated World War I in order to bring about the collapse of the British Empire and free his highland brethren from onerous English rule.
The concept of a supervillain hellbent on Scottish independence is, admittedly, kind of funny (not to mention in keeping with the overall politics of the Kingsman films). But The King’s Man can’t figure out what to do with the idea, apart from having the largely unseen bad guy yell a lot in a Scottish accent. Like so much of the film, it’s trying to have it both ways—to be stupid and clever at the same time, and coming across mostly as the former.
129 Comments
Well… Layer Cake is still terrific!
We are the layers. Getting shit on and expecting to like it.
Smartly-dressed, bowler-hat-wearing Ralph Feinnes goes up against a maniacal Scot in a feature-length wink at the audience, rife with gleeful era-mashing, that turns out not to be very good? I’ll stick with “The Avengers”, thanks. At least that had Eddie Izzard.
he played the raccoon, right?
No, he was the squirrel with a gun! The gun that he bought from the National Rifle Association. He runs around claiming countries with the cunning use of FLAGS!
the Mandela-effect Cinematic Universe?
Pffft. The Avengers didn’t use guns.
“The cunning use of flags” is the key to one of my all time favorite Eddie Izzard’s comedy bits. I bless you for citing it!
Incidentally, ky husband told me that it’s the comedian Bill Burr’s favorite bit from Eddie Izzard (apparently he’s a fan, who knew?). My favorite (which is hard to pick, as there are so many great bits from this show) from Dress To Kill is about British vs. American films.“A Room With A View Of HELL! Staircase of SATAN! Pond of DEATH!”.
“I’d better go.”
“Yes, I think you better had.”
At least it’s a gun and not something truly deadly like the Heimlich Maneuver
It’s more of a gesture. And let’s not forget the dangers of chiropractic treatment! “MAKE THE NOISE! MAKE THE NOISE! I LIVE FOR THE NOISE!”
…and Sean Connery in a teddy bear suit!
I like that they dubbed in Eddie Izzard saying “fuck” just so they wouldn’t be lumbered with a wimpy PG rating.
And I genuinely love that bit where Uma Thurman is trapped in the repeating room.
How the hell was the previous movie right-wing? It literally had a president whose goal was to win the war on drugs by allowing every drug user in the world to die!
Am I misreading something? Where does the author claim the previous movie was right-wing? He’s saying the new movie is based on a right-wing historical mythology.
I think their reacting to it being called reactionary.
you are not misreading anything.
“Matthew Vaughn’s hyperviolent, cartoonish spy pastiche had a sense of fun to go with its Mark Millar-inspired liberal-baiting”
The A.V. Club has been holding its collective nose regarding the Kingsman films and their “right wing” politics for years now.
I mean, the whole concept of an “independent” murder intelligence organization, operating outside of government oversight has more than a whiff of fascist fantasy to it.
It’s not really any different from almost any other action movie in that regard though (including most superhero films), so it’s very weird to single out Kingsman for that. People of all political stripes have fantasies of just doing it themselves.
literally had a president whose goal was to win the war on drugs by allowing every drug user in the world to dieHave you never heard of Rodrigo Duterte?
It literally had a president whose goal was to win the war on drugs by allowing every drug user in the world to die!I think you just answered your own question.
The film’s one good history joke—the casting of Tom Hollander in the
triple role of King George V, Tsar Nicholas II, and Kaiser Wilhelm
II—turns out to be a squandered stunt;
That’s unfortunate because it’s a very good joke.
…it’s trying to have it both ways—to be stupid and clever at the same time, and coming across mostly as the former.
The AV Club
In pop culture, WWI is the new WW2 (King’s Man, Wonder Woman, Jungle Cruise, and many more.) All the fun of punching Germans with world-shattering stakes, but none of that uncomfortable Nazi business.
And yet features the Boer Wars, when the British government tried their hand at concentration camps.
To be fair, both the North and South during the U.S. Civil War about forty years before the Boer War pioneered the idea of “Concentration Camps”.
Which never ceases to be weird since world war 1 is famously not a war you can sit back and watch bad people die for fun. Oh yeah that 18 year old farm boy just got shot by the heros! Yeah! Hurrah for imperialism, monarchy and empires!
It’s very good as a believable source of PTSD, though. (e.g. Peaky Blinders)
Well yeah. I’ve read countless accounts about the war and I’m surprised when someone doesn’t come back in some way traumatized. Just reading about the air war is endlessly miserable.
Shellshock crops up QUITE A BIT in British lit from the 20s and 30s, whether it’s what we consider literary fiction now (Mrs. Dalloway) or cozy mysteries of the time (Sayers’ Peter Wimsey series).
Not really an accident, that war consumed an entire generation, its why that time frame is usually called The Lost Generation.
That’s right, Miss Eli! I’d forgotten Lord Peter Wimsey brought the realities of PTSD to a mainstream audience.
Sayers’s own husband Mac Fleming suffered from it, along with a severe tendency to self-medicate with alcohol.
I actually got into the Wimsey series over the last year, and thought The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club tackled shell shock and veterans’ issues in a surprisingly thoughtful way. That it also has the most delightfully British title of all time is just a plus.
“This, but unironically!” – Matthew Vaughn
Thrill! as our heroes dig trenches.
Gasp! as they contract scurvy, dysentery, and trenchfoot.
Wonder! as they are shot for no particular reason on a quiet front.
In fairness to WW, that was because they felt they needed to make it more distinctive in light of Captain America, and the first Great War does line up well with the thematic and character elements for the first 2/3 until the cgi climax is foisted upon us.
This. When they announced that she was fighting “Ares” during WWI, I thought it was kind of brilliant. It’s a war where the clear “villain” is war itself. But the movie didn’t do anything with that so…
I was largely underwhelmed by most of Wonder Woman, but when she (seemingly) defeated her enemy and the war didn’t stop, and she was forced to rekon with the idea that humankind’s capacity for violence wasn’t tied to sinister supernatural forces, I was genuinely impressed. It was such a stark repudiation of the hero’s simplistic views, yet it didn’t come at the cost of her good nature or strong spirit. I loved that moment, and it retroactively made some earlier scenes better. Then they cheerfully undid all of it in favor of a CGI bad guy fistfight in the last ten minutes. What a fucking disappointment.
Even if they did have to reveal Ares, they could’ve just had him walk away from Wonder Woman after telling her he was hands-off. Maybe go into how there is such a thing as too much war even for him, as there is nothing for him to be the god of if humanity kills itself in one big war. That way they’d be able to use him in a future film, even if it is just to hold off Darkseid’s forces as the last Olympian for a scene.
If they wanted to be more distinctive, they probably could’ve avoided the whole actor named Chris playing a character named Steve sacrificing themselves to destroying a German superweapon in the form of a large plane full of WMDs headed to major cities in the middle of a World War.
I think we all know that the last hour of Wonder Woman is pretty much Captain America: The First Avenger, set during a different world war.
Works better for origin stories seeing as WW2 was a result of how WW1 ended.
1917 too.
A serious war movie to commemorate the 100th anniversary of said war (even if released slightly late) falls hardly in the same category than the other mentioned movies.
Not sure if you’re kidding, but that’s not really the same thing.
The Ur-text of this movement is 1986’s Biggles: Adventures in Time, a rather clunky attempt at adapting a series of WWI-set Boy’s Own Adventure books that were very popular in Britain in the mid-20th Century for the synth pop loving Back to the Future fans of the 80s that flopped at the Box Office, but is nonetheless jolly good fun.
This isn’t the first time I’ve made this observation about the rise of WWI movies and I’m pretty sure you mentioned this movie earlier, as well. It looks insane and thanks for the link.
You know I think I have; I think about how Wonder Woman is kind of like commercially successful Biggles quite a bit!
The full movie is on YouTube too! (From a channel that posts a lot of interesting movies).
Good to know. I’ll have to check it out!
The first movie was fairly bad, actually, and I have exactly zero interest in other entries in this “franchise.”
Also, why couldn’t the movie have just been SET in and around WWI without the hero’s goal being to literally try to stop it (since obviously he will fail quite spectacularly at it)?
The first two movies were terrible…and I loved them both. Sounds like this one lost sight of what made the first two stupid fun.
Because Mark Millar needs those sweet royalty checks.
It’s okay, Netflix paid up front. He’s not hurting for money.
He has to buy more goats to lick.
When I try to come up with the right adjective for Mark Millar’s signature, stretching across Kingsman, Kick Ass, and Wanted, I generally think the word: sordid.
Nihilistic comes to my mind.
the nihilism is too performative for it to read as sincere. If nothing means anything then why try so specifically to be a dick?
Maybe he’s so nihilistic he’s even nihilistic about his nihilism.
“Dude I don’t even know anymore.” – The Simpsons –
– Are these the Nazis, Walter?- No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there’s nothing to be afraid of.
I’ll admit that my knowledge of Mark Millar’s work is entirely based on interpretations of it via movies, and then comparisons of those movies with the original comics.*But his ethos/aesthetic comes across as ‘Are you offended yet?!’ He writes edgy tryhard material because he likes it as much as a high schooler and because he can (presumably because there are plenty of high schoolers who will buy it). And people buy it so he hasn’t had any reason to do anything differently.*I liked the first Kingsman, though it took a while for me to get to because I disliked Kick-Ass. Between those movies and watching the Lost in Adaptation video on Wanted, I feel like I’ve got a decent handle on what sort of stories Mark Millar tells and how he tells them.
Yeah, sounds about right…seems like it would be enjoyed by bullies with power fantasies and chips on their shoulders, as opposed to catering to the smol nerds he wants the jocks to keep getting the girl
“Puerile” comes to my mind.
Ugh, that fucking scene where the fucking hero heroically fingerbangs the hot Russian(?) spy, and we see it from the perspective of his fucking fingers.I was half-watching it on a plane, with no familiarity for the series. I had already gotten skeevy vibes from the opening car fight (I forget why), but I definitely turned it off at the insert-the-tracker scene.
I felt this franchise was pretty mean-spirited, which was a shame because there was a lot to like about it. No real interest in this installment.
Not to seem like a complete dweeb, and I enjoyed the previous two films a lot, but I always thought these films would have been really fun for kids and probably no less fun for adults if they had a little less gore, swearing and skeevy sex stuff, not least in an era where the Bond films have steadfastly refused to ever become straight forward fun.
I think the first one skated a pretty good line of “crass” and “likable”, but The Golden Circle had such a nihilistic, ugly streak that I was pretty miserable watching it outside of Elton John yelling “FUCK YOU!” (he’s good at that!). This sounds even more of the same, and makes me at least admire the first movie’s ability to tightrope its tonal whiplash its follow-ups can’t seem to manage.
Coincidentally, ‘clumsy regressive imperial nostalgic garbage trying to skate by with a thin layer of jokey irony’ would also be my review for the current UK government.
Damn. I’m stealing this. Too right.
I still haven’t fully processed the fact that I’m currently in the planning stages of moving there.
Oh, just ignore them. We all do.
Throwing this comment a Christmas party.
So this movie is about a group of heroes utterly failing to stop World War I?
Unless Wonder Woman is involved, pass
Could be worse, it could be about the heroes succeeding in stopping the villain who wants to stop World War I.
Just from that, you can tell they’ve got their eye on another sequel, eh?
The concept of a supervillain hellbent on Scottish independence is, admittedly, kind of funny (not to mention in keeping with the overall politics of the Kingsman films). But The King’s Man can’t figure out what to do with the idea, apart from having the largely unseen bad guy yell a lot in a Scottish accent. SOLD.
FUCKSTICK!
Well, it’s no Gerard Butler yelling “Go back to Fuckheadistan!”
“YOUS! IS! FUCKSTIIIIIIIICK!”
::KIIIIIIIIIIICKKKKKKKK::
Is he Scottish?
Feels like a missed opportunity to rope Gerard Butler into this franchise.
TONIGHT, WE DINE IN HELL!camera pulls back to show a banquet of traditional Scottish cuisine
A banquet that consists entirely of Scotch whisky, haggis and deep-fried Mars Bars.
LET’S GET PISSHED!
Blofeldian villain has assembled an international conspiracy of malefactors—among them Grigori Rasputin, Mata Hari, Gavrilo Princip, and even Vladimir LeninWait…five people…shouty Scotsman…IT’S A PENTAVERATE.
Surely this series is one of the strangest attempts to create a franchise in recent years. The first film saw enough bums in seats to make a profit fair enough but even at the time it was somewhat… abrasive… and stands in even poorer taste now.
Wait you mean the ending where Eggsy or whatever his name is saves the day and as a reward literally gets to fuck the princess in the ass is just slightly problematic?
What in the everylasting fuck is this movie. As someone who studies a lot of ww1 history my head is spinning at just about everything. Also love of British classism circa 1900, goody.
If it had a glowing space cube could it be an MCU movie?
Didn’t the first movie state that The Kingsmen were founded because a bunch of wealthy Brits lost all of their sons during WWI?Seems like the plot of this one contradicts that
All the emphasis on Fiennes and mentioning the main kid in this is his character’s son who wants to fight has me guessing – just guessing mind – that his kid dies partway through the movie.
Next King’s Man will reveal that the organization was founded in 1492, after the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.
I really don’t like the duo Vaughn/Millar. They don’t care about their characters at all and I have a problem watching their films with detachment required and still enjoy myself.
Was it an accident or intentional that you worked at least 2 Oxford commas into the review?
I had a bad feeling this movie was not a great idea when I initially heard about it. If anything this story could easily have been told within a further Kingsman sequel as the basis for the plot in about 20 minutes.
It’s also a pretty wired take given that the Scots were pretty staunchly imperialist at the time, and the country’s economy was reliant on selling ships and trains to the Empire. If the First World War had caused the collapse of the British Empire, the Scots would have been invading London to start it back up again.
“the Scots would have been invading London to start it back up again.”Go on…
Now that’s a pitch for a movie that needs to be made.
World War 1: The Revenge of Mary Queen of Scots?
She’ll team up with a homicidal maniac with a kilt and a claymore who goes by the name Macadder. Speaking of Scotland, I wonder when The King’s Man: The Caledonian Mafia will be released.
“Grigori Rasputin, Mata Hari, Gavrilo Princip, and even Vladimir Lenin”Fuck me, that sounds dumb as hell. Pouring one out for the history nerds twitching in their seats. I feel ya.
Why are we still crapping on Mata Hari, after all this time? She was a scapegoat.
Same with Rasputin. Why is he always histories greatest monster? He was just a monk who was too close to the Tsars wife. Even the legend of how he died is grossly distorted.
I’m already looking forward to how YouTube channel History Buffs, which does an excellent job checking movies for historical accuracy, will absolutely lose their shit while dissecting this mess.
Ehhhhhh that guy never shows his sources and frequently gets details wrong. He’s also kind of a reactionary prick who thinks Britain can’t do wrong.
I’ll have to somewhat agree with you on the ‘Rule Britannia’ jingoism (he is British, after all), but I don’t think he gets all that many facts wrong, honestly. Any better suggestions regarding YouTubers talking about historic accuracy in film?
Yeah I do. Cynical History uses citations and footnotes and leaves sources in the description and tends to focus on important details that are wrong in a film. I’m speaking from experience when I say he’s wrong, his Casino video is terrible. I’m friend with CH and he’s from Las Vegas, his dad is the history dude from Pawn Stars for example. HB doesn’t do his own research he has a team and I suspect they don’t do much research. I also do history videos and the one time I did a subject that overlapped with him, Jack the Ripper, he missed the mark badly. Regardless there’s a lot of good history YouTubers but it depends on the subject since many are narrowly focused.
Thanks. Did you mean ‘The Cynical Historian’? I can’t seem to find a YT page named ‘Cynical History’.
Yep thats it. He started off as Cynical History and then rebranded and I occasionally mix the two up. He does less movie reviews now but still here and there. I actually worked with him on the Anne Bonny pirate video.
Okay, I’ll check it out. Since you’re acquainted with the tale of Anne Bonny, I suppose you’ve already watched Internet Historian’s wonderful take on Stede Bonnet, gentleman pirate?
Yes actually I have seen it. Its about 85 percent accurate which is impressive. Stede Bonnet was a cartoon character of a man.
I’ll have to somewhat agree with you on the ‘Rule Britannia’ jingoism (he is British, after all), but I don’t think he gets all that many facts wrong, honestly. Any better suggestions regarding YouTubers talking about historic accuracy in film?
Ra-Ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen.
Now there was a cat who was really far gone.
I just watched this…If anyone’s interested in bass playing, this guy is god tier.
I didn’t even know how much I needed this in my life.
It’s a fine line between stupid and… clever.
I might be the only person who thought the second Kingsman was a blast. Idiotic? Yes. Overlong? Yes. Overstuffed? Yes. But, good God, that was one insane movie.
I’ll watch Gemma Arterton in anything.
“fuckstick”?
I have no interest in this movie whatsoever, but after seeing a trailer for it every time I went to a theater for the past three years, I’m a little wistful about it finally coming out. It’s become a part of the movie-going experience to say, “Wait, didn’t that already come out? Like, a while ago?”
I certainly liked the first one well enough as a borderline-parody take on the James Bond formula – more ridiculous plots and stunts, but more realistic violence and sex. It wasn’t any more reactionary than any movie glorifying “gentlemanly violence” is, and there are a lot of those (including all the Bond films).The second one was another matter – less fun, more “wait, do they mean this like it sounded?” moments (is the takeaway of almost being murdered by a psychopath dealer and a psychopath president really: Don’t do drugs, drink alcohol instead?).
I’ll give this a chance. I’ll be out, though, if the series ever approaches a level of nihilism and anti-humanism comparable to 2008’s Wanted.
I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure what your paragraph about the film’s “old-school conservative pop history” means in relation to this review. I’m not looking for historic reliability in a Kingsman film, so I don’t know why I would care that this film ignores and changes history. That’s part of the fun of these films.