The King’s Man Review

After two films of varying quality the Kingsman franchise returns for a prequel film that shows the origins of the spy organisation.

Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) is an English aristocrat and committed pacifist. When The Great War erupts Oxford starts up a spy network and along with his son, Conrad (Harris Dickinson), they get involved in some major events of the war. However, a secret organisation led by The Shepherd has been orchestrating events on both sides with The Shepherd planning to bring down the British Empire.

The King’s Man wasn’t the first time Matthew Vaughn has made a prequel to a popular franchise. He had previously made X-Men: First Class which was one of the best X-Men films. With X-Men: First Class he was able to mix the origins of the X-Men with the Cuban Missile Crisis playing an important role. Vaughn was trying to repeat that trick with The King’s Man and do it on a grander scale.

The King’s Man attempted to incorporate many events of World War One like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the role of Rasputin in Tsar Nicholas’ court, The Russian Revolution, and the Zimmerman Telegraph. X-Men: First Class was successful at mixing real history with its comic book fiction. As a history nerd, The King’s Man did please me, especially when it looked at more obscure events like the Zimmerman Telegraph and mixed it with its fiction.

The idea of secret organisations and masterminds trying to start World War One has been used before. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows have shown villains trying to start a war between the Great Powers. The King’s Man took this one step further by showing The Shepherd and his herd being able to start the war and continue their scheming afterward. However, The King’s Man was nowhere near as tightly scripted as Vaughn’s previous films.

The King’s Man was structured like a series of comic book issues or a TV series. The Shepherd started a scheme, Oxford and his team stopped it, rinse and repeat. This is fine in an episodic median, but most films aren’t meant to be episodic. It’s meant to tell a complete story in one go. This was particularly surprising because Vaughn has shown he could keep many story plates spinning in one go. Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, and Kingsman: The Secret Service all had different characters with different interests and agendas but everything still felt connected. Less so with The King’s Man.

The other issue with The King’s Man’s writing was the villain’s motivation. The Shepherd was a foul-mouthed Scot who hated the English. His plan was to start the war by killing the Archduke, then knock Russia out of the war so the full force of Germany could be used against the British Empire. It was a plan with a lot of holes, like assuming the British would have joined the war in the first place and ignoring most of the causes of the war. The film boiled World War One down to it being a conflict about three cousins who didn’t like each other.

Making the villain Scottish was also an issue because he said the English had suppressed his people for 700 years. That statement sounded like the character should have been Irish, not English since Anglo-Irish relations were hostile. The Shepherd was able to orchestrate an international scheme for his own nationalist ambitions. Moriarty’s plan in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was easier to understand in comparison to The Shepherd’s. Moriarty wanted to start a war because he saw it as inevitable, and he just wanted to profit off it.

The film’s historical revisionism did cross the line with the mid-credit scene. It left a bitter taste in the mouth because of what it implied. Even for a comic-book film it was hard to accept.

Whilst The King’s Man had story issues, Vaughn did seem to learn from the mistakes of Kingsman: The Golden Circle. The Golden Circle was a cluttered film that had incomprehensible action sequences, retconning important moments from the first film, and lacked the heart of the first film. The first film had emotional investment because of the surrogate father-son relationship between Harry and Eggsy. The King’s Man had a literal father-son relationship between the Oxfords. In The King’s Man there was an ideological difference between the father and son because Orlando Oxford was a pacifist who had seen the hardships of war, whilst Conrad wanted to serve out of a sense of duty. Orlando Oxford started a spying organisation because he wanted to end the war and bring about peace.

The King’s Man ensured there were emotional stakes and Fiennes and Dickinson sold their roles. There was both love and conflict between the two with the father trying to do everything he can to prevent his son from going to the frontline. This relationship and the gravity of the war made The King’s Man the most serious film in the franchise so far. There were no funky gadgets, head explosions, or crude sex jokes like in the first two films.

The action in The King’s Man was an improvement over The Golden Circle. Vaughn and his team went overboard with the camera tricks and movements that made the action fights hard to follow. They could give someone motion sickness. Vaughn must have realised this because The King’s Man had a less is more approach. The action was allowed to play out with less fancy camera movements, and it was all the better for this. There were some really well-done fight scenes like a knife fight between Rasputin (Rhys Ifans) and the Oxford’s loyal servant Shola (Djimon Hounsou) and a silent fight between British and German soldiers on No Man’s Land. The No Man’s Land fight had a gritty feel because characters were fighting with knives and clubs and both sides had to remain silent.

The cast was a mixed bag. Fiennes and Dickinson gave the film its heart and Fiennes and Hounsou showed they were credible in action roles, even in their 50s. Hounsou was particularly impressed as an action hero because he had a great physique and was great at wielding a knife. Other actors were disappointed in their roles. The Shepherd’s role was pretty much a man playing a sweary Scotsman and Ifans’ Rasputin was over-the-top. This was remarkable considering this was a series that had Samuel L. Jackson perform with a lisp.

The King’s Man was an improvement over The Golden Circle because it had more emotional investment and strong action sequences. But it was a film that suffered from weak writing and structure.