Director: Matthew Vaughan
Written by: Matthew Vaughn, Karl Gajdusek
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tom Hollander, Harris Dickinson, Daniel Brühl, Djimon Hounsou, Charles Dance
Country: United Kingdom
Running Time: 131 min
Year: 2021
BBFC Certificate: 18
In the pantheon of great comic writers, Mark Millar is akin to a Daily Mail journalist. His work has more than a faint whiff of misogyny and hyper-violence, but his core ideas are ripe for film adaptations, especially in director Matthew Vaughan’s hands. He cut his comic book adapting teeth on Kick-Ass and then Kingsman, which was a cracking action adventure, a sort of cross between Bond and Men In Black. While the sequel lost the plot, it did so entertainingly. This mongrel film series is now a trilogy with the release of Vaughan’s prequel, The King’s Man, which explores the history of the gentlemen spy club.
We continue the downward trend of Matthew Vaughan sequels and this long awaited third Kingsman film is incredibly dull. The first two films skirted with controversy and crazy plotting, but The King’s Man picks the middle of the road and stubbornly stays there. The cast are excellent, especially the marvellous Ralph Fiennes. He’s a noble character with quiet resolve, and he’s very nice. So is his son, played by Harris Dickinson. Gemma Arterton, a tooled up nanny with a cheeky attitude, is also nice, as is the always reliable Djimon Hounsou. Charles Dance plays Lord Kitchener as an absolute gentleman, at a similar pitch to his Mountbatten in The Crown (he even writes similarly well-timed letters). Rhys Ifans is having fabulous fun as Grigori Rasputin. He’s definitely not nice, but he alone cannot give the film the wallop it needs to stand out. It needed more irreverence and less earnest importance. I’d rather it at least contain something to make me cross, like the notoriously dodgy festival scene in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. But no, instead it barely earns a shrug.
We don’t have enough genre films from the World War 1 period, so it’s a shame this is so limp. It’s a cute idea to link the Ferdinand assassination to a SPECTRE style operation, there’s a lumpy history lesson to be had, but the plot struggles to leverage the impact of the war into a motive. The action set-pieces are at least reliably thrilling stuff, especially a full-on knife fight. Nothing to match the sequences in the original film though.
It’s a handsome looking film with great characters. Vaughan has a confident style that’s always served him well, but he seems to have forgotten how to be an anarchist too.
EXTRA FEATURES
The supplemental features are expansive and just as uninspiring as the film. The Great Game Begins is about 90 minutes long, but really doesn’t explore anything beyond the usual ‘making of’ fluff.
- The King’s Man: The Great Game Begins
- No Man’s Land: Silent Knife Sequence breakdown
- Remembrance and Finding Purpose
- Official Red Band Trailer
VIDEO
Story-wise, The King’s Man is a damp squib, but its production is beyond criticism. Matthew Vaughan is a modern, punchy director, but he and regular cinematographer Ben Davis work with traditional lenses, giving their films a solid, old fashioned feel. This depth of colour, contrast and detail is perfectly realised in UHD and especially true in the opulent interiors, while fight scenes don’t lose detail. The presentation is of a similar standard to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock movies.