While I find it weird when movie series bounce around in an overall themed timeline, “The King’s Man” struggled more than most others.
It struggled and got bogged down with the weight and seriousness of its issues while trying to inject comedy at terrible timing.
That being said, I still thoroughly enjoyed myself with the wonderfully choreographed fighting scenes, musical choices, and overall settings.
However, I think it was trying too hard to be a definitive action film and that hurts the film.
The King’s Man is a spy action comedy film directed by Matthew Vaughn from a screenplay by Vaughn and Karl Gajdusek and a story by Vaughn.
The third installment in the Kingsman film series, which is based on the comic book “The Secret Service” by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, the film serves as a prequel to 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and 2017’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
The movie is rated R for sequences of strong/bloody violence, language, and some sexual material and clocks in at 131 minutes long.
The film features an ensemble cast that includes Ralph Fiennes (who also serves as one of the film’s executive producers), Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tom Hollander, Harris Dickinson, Daniel Brühl, Djimon Hounsou, Alexandra Lara, Alexander Shaw, Ron Cook, Barbara Drennan, Joel Basman, Aaron Vodovoz, and Charles Dance.
In 1902, Duke Orlando Oxford (Fiennes), his wife Emily (Lara), and their young son Conrad (Shaw) visit a concentration camp in South Africa during the Boer War while working for the Red Cross.
Emily is killed during a Boer sniper attack on the camp, causing Orlando, a sworn pacifist (although a former army officer who was awarded the Victoria Cross), to determine that the world needs someone to head off such conflicts before they occur.
Twelve years later, Orlando has recruited two of his servants, Shola (Hounsou) and Polly (Arterton), into his spy network dedicated to protecting the United Kingdom and the British Empire from the approaching Great War.
Conrad (Dickinson), eager to fight, is forbidden to join up by the protective Orlando, who persuades Lord Herbert Kitchener (Dance), Secretary of State for War, not to let him join the army.
Conrad and Orlando ride with Orlando’s friend Archduke Franz Ferdinand (Cook) through Sarajevo, and Conrad saves the Archduke from a bomb thrown by Gavrilo Princip (Basman), a rebel intent on sparking a war.
Later, however, Princip happens to run into the Archduke’s entourage again, this time succeeding in fatally shooting Ferdinand and his wife Sophia (Drennan).
Orlando’s group, composed mostly of other dignitaries’ socially invisible servants, learns that Princip was part of a plot to pit the German, Russian, and British empires against each other.
The group, headed by the mysterious Shepherd, has its own network of agents, including the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin (Ifans), a trusted adviser to Tsar Nicholas of Russia.
Rasputin, on the orders of the Shepherd, manipulates Tsar Nicholas (Hollander) by poisoning his young son, and only “curing” him when Nicholas promises to leave the war.
Conrad is notified of Rasputin’s manipulation by his cousin Felix Yusupov (Vodovoz).
Knowing the Western Front will be left vulnerable if Russia leaves the war, Conrad delivers this information to Kitchener.
While it takes liberties with historical tragedies, at least the film tries to inject some humor and entertaining fight sequences.
Still, I can only recommend the movie for fans of the first two or someone looking for a spy comedy flick.
