The King's Man review

THE KING’S MAN: 

DESPITE A GREAT CAST, MANNERS DON’T REALLY MAKETH MAN THIS TIME AROUND! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** out of 4

20^TH CENTURY STUDIOS

Ralph Fiennes and Djimon Hounsou in The King’s Man

 

            Director, Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class) takes the Kingsman franchise back in time to World War I in The King’s Man, the third installment of the Kingsman film series, based on the comic book by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. The film serves as a prequel to 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and its 2017 sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle and revolves around the founding members of the titular organization and the events leading up to its creation. 

            I really enjoyed the first Kingsman back in 2015 with its charismatic and colorful cast of characters, wit, and energetic fight sequences, it was a very pleasant surprise especially for a movie I didn’t really have any expectations for when I first saw the trailer. The critical and commercial success of Kingsman: The Secret Service led to the sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle which had a lot of entertaining moments (and even downright bizarre moments involving robot dogs, Elton John, and forced cannibalism) but couldn’t quite live up to its predecessor in the end. 

            Now, we come to The King’s Man with Vaughn returning to direct and in the places of Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, and Mark Strong, we have Ralph Fiennes (Lawrence of Arabia, The English Patient, Harry Potter franchise), Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters), and Djimon Hounsou (Gladiator, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Shazam!). Much like another 20^th Century Fox/20^th Century Studios project, The New Mutants, The King’s Man’s release had been delayed multiple times partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic and even had a trailer attached to the 2019 Quentin Tarantino film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but little did we know we had to wait two years to finally see it, at least it didn’t suffer the same fate as New Mutants which had a trailer all the way back in 2017 and wasn’t released until 2020. 

            So, how does The King’s Man hold up and was it worth the long wait? Not really. I’ll give the film credit that the acting is solid and some of the fight scenes are a lot of fun, unfortunately the movie surrounding them is a colossal mess and kind of boring, which should not be the case with a Kingsman film.

            The film follows British aristocrat, Orlando, Duke of Oxford (Fiennes), whose wife is murdered after a Boer sniper attack during the Boer War which causes him to conclude that the world needs an organization to head off conflicts and wars before they happen. However, when some of history’s worst tyrants and criminal masterminds plot to plunge the world into the Great War and kill millions of people in the process, Orlando alongside his recruits, Polly (Arterton) and Shola (Hounsou) must race against time to stop them before it’s too late. 

            The film also stars Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, The Amazing Spider-Man) as Rasputin, Matthew Goode (A Single Man, The Imitation Game, Downton Abbey) as Morton/The Shepherd, Tom Hollander (Gosford Park, Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Bohemian Rhapsody) as King George/Percival, Harris Dickinson (Trust, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Matthias & Maxime) as Conrad Oxford, Daniel Brühl (The Bourne Ultimatum, Inglourious Basterds, Marvel Cinematic Universe) as Erik Jan Hanussen, Charles Dance (Last Action Hero, The Imitation Game, Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)) as Herbert Kitchener, Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass 1 and 2, Nowhere Boy, Avengers: Age of Ultron) as Archie Reid/Lancelot, and Stanley Tucci (Prizzi’s Honor, Road to Perdition, Captain America: The First Avenger) as United States Ambassador/Bedivere. 

            Overall, The King’s Man had the potential to be an interesting prequel to the Kingsman franchise focusing on the founding members, unfortunately it misses its mark in the execution resulting is an inconsistent and downright dull mess of a film. I wouldn’t say it’s an awful movie as there are a lot of things to admire about it, but the narrative is very unfocused and cluttered. 

            It literally feels like several different movies awkwardly stitched together with no rhyme or reason. One moment it’s like you’re watching a legit war drama that you would probably see at the Oscars where Ralph Fiennes is overprotective of his son and doesn’t want him to fight in the war, the next it’s like a James Bond or Indiana Jonesmovie with very cartoonish villains, it shifts again to intense war sequences ripped straight out of 1917, and finally a stylized and bloody battle scene reminiscent to the previous Kingsman films, I wouldn’t mind any of this if they were integrated into the plot better, but as is…yeah, it’s a mess, no other way to put it. 

            Because of how inconsistent and jumbled together the film is, I often had to be reminded I was watching a Kingsman movie to begin with. I’m serious, had it not been for the title, the scenes at the Kingsman tailor shop, occasionally witty banter between the characters, and the whole “Manners Maketh Man” quote, it really doesn’t have much to do with Kingsman and is more like a generic World War I spy espionage film that just happened to have the Kingsman in it. 

            For the most part, the actors portray their characters well with Fiennes’ Orlando and Rhys Ifans’ delightfully campy performance as the scenery-chewing villain, Rasputin being the highlights. However, the supporting characters are very stock and while Fiennes, Arterton, and Hounsou give excellent performances, the characters themselves aren’t nearly as memorable or compelling as Eggsy, Galahad, and Merlin from the earlier films. 

            The action sequences are exhilarating to watch, whether we’re talking the intense and brooding war scenes of World War I or the zany, fast-paced, and stylized action that the Kingsman franchise is known for. But without a strong story or interesting characters then what’s really the point in watching it? Aside from maybe watching it as a mindless action movie to turn your brain off for, but it even doesn’t do that great a job at being one of those. 

            As you can probably tell, I did not get into The King’s Man that much and is definitely the most forgettable out of the Kingsman films. As divisive as Kingsman: The Golden Circle was, at least that movie is so strange and bonkers in the choices it made that I could still have fun with it despite its flaws, I can’t really do that with this one sadly. 

            There are a lot of things about the film that I admire, but the inconsistent tone, messy script, and bland characters kind of ruin the experience for me. Unless you’re really curious about it, I’d recommend skipping it and going to see Spider-Man: No Way Home again instead.