The King's Man (2021)

There is no beating around the bush: this film is bad. But what makes it a cinematic atrocity is having such a large audience on hold, such a great cast, 100 mils and still messing it up. All Kingsman movies are over the top, but this one went both too far and did too little. It felt like 50% of it was exposition and the rest was Ralph Fiennes trying to save the film, to no avail.

Ironically, the highlight of the film was Rhys Ifans. I mean, he's a great actor, but he was in select company: Fiennes, Dance, even Hollander and Goode. And while he played a rather minor character, from the entire cast he was the only one close to memorable.

Perhaps tongue in cheek, perhaps in bad taste, in such a British film the Scots are the villains and the Americans are the jokes. WW I was a one man masterplan and one other man made it all stop. A pointless prequel if there ever was one, and that's saying a lot.

The fight scenes were kind of well done, but that's the only positive thing I can think of. Acting was good, too, but no material to work with.

Bottom line: a damn shame of a film.

Fmovies: A decent prequel that had a few great action scenes and dramatic moments; but that overall didn't have the charm of its predecessors. The CGI looked too computer generated and the storyline too heavy. With so much story to cover the scene jumps happened to often and disrupted the flow. Acting was good and characters were well cast,

For those who always felt that history was boring ... well they can relive and rewrite it here. Or see it rewritten - though I reckon you have to at least have some understanding of history and who lived when or was assassinated by what and how that was managed ... or gone wrong.

Of course this takes many liberties to say the least in the retelling - as I think I made obvious in my above statement. So some might think of it as fun - an entertaining "history lesson" of sorts .. others may not like the take on it. Of course if you already have an issue with the movie ... well it won't bode well going forward.

I thought many jokes historically speaking worked. Still as my opening line or review summary already indicates, it is smaller bits and pieces ... and some do not seem to be fitting with others. Same goes with the tone - a romance, that isn't one. A saved by the bell moment, another moment that does almost tell us one of our main characters is invincible, just to completely turn this on its .. head! No pun intended.

And an end fight that is quite nice, but a telegraphed twist punch (kick?) ... the midway fight, which feels more like a dance, is the way better choreographed one. Even if the end fight has a nice pov touch ... that should have only been used once ... maybe twice. But not as much as it ended up being on screen, because it got annoying. And again we are back to the walking a thin line, mixing things up, not being able to get the correct amount of whatever would be best for the story.

We do have great actors and therefor most of the jokes work and even an omission of any story whatsoever does not really matter. The end twist should also be quite obvious - from the beginning almost. Shame - I really do like Matthew Vaughn and I especially liked the ... I'll call it approach to the first Kings Man movie ... this reboot/prequel kind of thing ... well it does not really do much for the franchise. But you may feel differently. Because you may be smitten by certain parts of the movie and can suspend your disbelief to feel this is a coherent amalgation of all things combined ... not minding that there is almost an absence of a cool uber villain (Rasputin aside who does a great job by the way) ... the wait was too long, the end result not entirely worth it. Some great jokes and great visuals aside.

The King's Man fmovies. This is a prequel to Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014). Orlando (Ralph Fiennes) is the pacifist Duke of Oxford. He, his wife Emily, and their young son Conrad visit a British concentration camp in South Africa for the Red Cross. Emily is killed and he promises her to protect Conrad at all cost. With the impending First World War, Conrad is itching to join but Orlando refuses to let him go. Unbeknownst to them, there is a sinister force pushing the European empires into a devastating conflagration.

There is a bit of awkwardness in reworking history. Apparently, a Scottish nationalist is responsible for WWI. Rasputin was a vampire... Now that's interesting. I wouldn't mind that movie. He seems to be a good boss level. That fight is fun. That should have been the story. Instead, the movie keeps going and going and going. Sometimes it's fine but mostly it meanders. Prequels are often problematic since the ending is pre-set with no surprises. This one is no different. It has various problems but Rasputin is really fun.