The King's Man

A thoroughbred origin story and rollicking good adventure in one, led by an excellent Ralph Fiennes. It’s a hoot.

In its best moments, The King’s Man feels like you and your friends have just dumped out your great grandfather’s dusty crate of tin soldiers to create a game that has no rules whatsoever beyond doing something ridiculous. But the movie’s politics? Ugh. They are the cinematic equivalent of your British uncle complaining about cabbies with foreign accents or claiming that Brexit didn’t go nearly far enough.

Like a great big playful un-neutered pitbull, Matthew Vaughn’s new Kingsman movie comes crashing into our cinematic lives this Christmas, overturning the furniture and frantically humping everyone’s leg before rolling over on the carpet for you to tickle its tummy or anything else that comes to hand.

History is just one big playpen for The King’s Man, but some games are less fun than others. Maybe using a glimpse of Hitler for a cheap thrill wouldn’t seem quite so grotesque in a movie that were more entertaining, but The King’s Man isn’t so it does.

The film can’t resist revelling in a conservative conclusion outside Buckingham Palace, with a victory banner fluttering against a smattering of St George’s flags.

But for all its faults, The King's Man is at least hilariously bad in the way that emotionless, made-by-committee blockbusters like Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker are not.

All the broad humor of the original film is gone, replaced by clunky and often tasteless gags, and the attempts to extract pathos from genuine tragedies vary from tacky to insulting.

I really liked this movie. I especially liked the villain because you don't even know who he is. Most of all I liked the performance of the actor Ralph Fiennes. I'm waiting for the next part.

The King's Man gave me everything I was looking for. A story with lots of action, variety of characters, lots of one on one fighting, and of course an intriguing final boss. A perfect example of a popcorn movie. Sorry that I didn't watch it at the cinema.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The biggest issue that the King's Man deals with is the lack of identity. Due to the seriousness of the plot and the fact that it revolves around the start of WW1, They couldn't tap into the comedic tone that the first two films had. Instead, We had this kind of awkward movie that we couldn't take seriously because it didn't feel serious with action scenes that felt straightforward and uninspired. And it certainly doesn't help that the final 1/3 of the film absolutely drags. Overall, It's the kind of movie I wanted to like more than I did. It tried too hard to be something that it wasn't and ran longer than it should have.

Boooooooo Did not enjoy this film. It fluctuated between being boring, stupid and depressing.