The King’s Man review: A big, crazy action spy movie … for adults

Many directors feel either stuck in comics-to movies or burned out. Plenty of filmmakers have directed game-changing, career-making superhero pictures (Tim Burton, Jon Favreau, Joss Whedon), only to step back after a less well-received sequel, while others who started small (Jon Watts, James Gunn) don’t seem able or interested enough to find their way back to more intimate projects. This is what it’s about The King’s ManMatthew Vaughn is a comic book filmmaker who gives the impression that he loves what he does, and not burdened with a quasi-mythological view.

The King’s Man marks Vaughn’s third foray into a comic book world (following Kick-AssX-Men: The First Class(), but he seems to love his James Bond-ish half spoofs that are based off the comics of Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar. Vaugn is directing the prequel to his previous Kingsman films, both of them also directed. These are the types of projects that often get passed off to visual effects supervisors or editors, looking for big-budget opportunities in their fledgling directorial career. Vaughn is happy to be there. If anyone is going to supervise the series’ shift into a surprisingly serious-minded Dad Movie, it’s going to be Vaughn himself.

This is, quite surprisingly, exactly what it is. The King’s Man It is the ultimate movie for Dads: A more classy and dad-friendly World War I action film with frequent, but not infrequent tastes of old Kingsman ultraviolence. The brash-young-man-and-proper-older-badass dynamic that existed between Taron Egerton and Colin Firth in the earlier films has been flipped into a father-son story about Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes), still reeling from the death of his wife, desperately hoping that his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) will avoid jumping into the action as geopolitical tensions escalate and Britain’s entry into World War I looms. The story is never fully passed along to the younger character; this really is Fiennes’ movie all the way, and probably more interesting for it.

Photographs by Peter Mountain/20th Century Studios

Orlando is basically a proto-Kingsman, to the point where the eventual and prequel-required formulation of this independent “secret service” doesn’t have much impact. After all, Orlando is already consorting with Shola (Djimon Hounsou, mainstay of nearly all current film franchises) and Polly (Gemma Arterton), who moonlight as members of his large estate’s staff while working as industrious spies with Mission: ImpossibleThey have their own style weaknesses and specialties. In other words, they’re domestic workers in more ways than one.

That’s a cute idea that also speaks to the way The King’s ManWhile trying to curb its aristocratic nature, Conrad also wants to indulge them. Conrad is told from a young age that “it’s important that people of privilege lead by example, and Orlando’s staff are super-capable heroes. But the movie still revels in his supposed equals happily calling him “your grace.” It’s an apologetically attractive look at colonialism that oddly has Fiennes recalling his character from 1998’s TV adaptation It Avengers (and agreeably weird curiosity, for what it’s worth). Fiennes is now an actor that seems to be incapable of providing anything but full commitment in his acting performances over the years. He was tested by the film demanding that he keep a straight face.

This more serious business does offer a respite from the gleeful did-I-offend-you-bruv tone of the earlier movies; The King’s Man is Vaughn’s least smirky movie since X-Men: The First ClassAlthough it is part of Mark Millar Extended Universe, the film is not easily recognisable. The remnants of the older movies are mostly the handful of elaborate and still extremely violent action sequences, and the film’s cartoon version of real history, which involves Tom Hollander triple-cast as King George, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Tsar Nicholas; the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; and Rasputin (Rhs Ifans), one of the bad guy’s co-conspirators and subject of a setpiece that involves attempting to feed him a poisoned cake. Things get more physically intense.

Peter Mountain/20th Century Studios. Photo

Classical animations are used for the action scenes, such as Rasputin’s skirmish. KingsmanStyle: A springy, virtual camera zooms around in the frantic fights and takes note of all gore. The big climax feels a bit less sensationalized and more mission-driven than Vaughn’s previous entries — again recalling his X-Men installment, however slightly — with fewer (though not zero) outlandish gadgets. The first Kingsman had Sofia Boutella with knife-legs, Gemma Arterton’s sharpshooting feels almost restrained.

The film’s cartoony bits still stick out, because the journey to the line “time to kill Rasputin” (and the detour away from it; Rasputin ultimately isn’t the movie’s main event) is surprisingly lengthy, as Orlando and Conrad clash over what kind of sacrifices should be expected or volunteered by young men for their country. The origins of Kingsman are explained in previous movies. Are these the questions that this film series can answer? It is worth the effort to travel and stay in hotels just for this? KingsmanPrequel, in a slightly different context? This is still a movie about a madman manipulating world events to vengefully pit Germany against England, where the bad guy’s face is concealed to lead up to a big reveal, despite having characterization that’s pretty much limited to “Scottish.”

Still, the tension between Vaughn’s designs on making a more old-fashioned, serious-minded war/spy picture and the usual cheeky battle royale makes The King’s ManIt is more memorable than the predecessor The Golden Circle of KingsmanA middling retread. Vaughn may really be trying to make an entire universe from a single concept. It’s not an especially noble or artistically successful pursuit, but if it keeps him out of trouble and lets the perpetually underserved Gemma Arterton fire off a few rounds, who are we to stop him?