The King's Man (2021)

Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman series is always just a little off. There are some interesting ideas but Vaughn always takes them just too far, off the edge really, and takes me out of his movie. Unfortunately despite a lot of what I felt The King's Man had going for it, it fell into the same traps as the previous films in the series. 

I really liked the historical aspects of the film, tying real world events into a narrative about the creation of this clandestine fictional organization. The idea of one evil organization destabilizing the world is an interesting one, but is problematic too. It ends up making it seem like the world's devastation can be laid at the feet of a "few bad apples" instead of looking at how political and economic systems lead to violence and war. The King's Man attempts to be an anti-colonialist film and advance values of pacifism yet ends up due to this approach being rather imperialist in its view. 

The idea of a governmentless organization taking on the wheels of power and corruption could have been truly interesting in a revisionist historical way but the film eschews that for a more straight forward approach. As long as the "good guys" win (in this case the good old UK but by extension the US and the rest of the western allies) then all is good. The film posits individual historical actors as part of a cabal of evil letting western freedom be the real heroics. While Vaughn plays fast and loose with challenging notions like it's cool to die for your country in the end he falls in line and the film loses any real insightful approach it could have had. 

But that isn't my only issue with the film. Like the Edgerton vehicles before this, The King's Man errs on the side of absurdity. This is mostly summed up in using Rasputin as one of the main villains. His characterization by Ifans is so completely over the top he is more disgusting than frightful. I might have preferred the latter. There is the weirdest ass scene in the middle where Vaughn channels James Gunn and has Ifans go off as a raging lunatic. The whole scene is designed to make the audience go "what the fuck?" but I'm not sure it works out doing so in a good way. 

I will give Vaughn credit. He pulls some interesting surprises. Who lives and who dies ends up being rather surprising and there are some clever turns in the plot. But all that did was make me wish the film wasn't so silly. I think for me I'm more attractive to fantastic movies that take themselves more seriously. It doesn't mean there can't be humour or things that are rather impossible. But always winking at the audience as if we're just here having a laugh takes me too far out of the film to really enjoy it.

The King's Man

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Djimon Hounsou, Harris Dickinson, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tom Hollander,  Daniel Brühl, Charles Dance, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Stanley Tucci, Valerie Pachner, Joel Basman, August Diehl, Ian Kelly

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Writers: Karl Gajdusek, Matthew Vaughn