The King’s Man

At once fiercely inventive and shamefully imitative, Matthew Vaughn’s madcap anti-war epic engages as it bemuses.

For king and country: Harris Dickinson and Djimon Hounsou (and Gemma Arterton on the balcony)

The King’s Man is an origins reboot of the spy spoofs Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017). Yet in spite of the source material being Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons’ comic book series, the new film initially feels more like David Lean than, say, Quentin Tarantino. Even so, the prologue does not promise greatness. It is 1902, and emboldened by Matthew Margeson and Dominic Lewis' sweeping score, a car pulls up in front of a military outpost in the arid wilds of South Africa. It is only then that the six-year-old Conrad Oxford (Alexander Shaw) turns to his mother and asks, “why are we here, Mama?” In real life, the kid would have thought to pose the question before they left their pile in Oxford. But then The King’s Man is a comic-strip of a movie, although its shifts in tone veer from stark realism to Indiana Jones-type swashbuckle to Blackadder silliness. Yet one might have expected more from its writer-director Matthew Vaughn than the line (uttered by Djimon Hounsou’s acrophobic manservant Shola), “if God had meant us to fly, he would have given us wings.” There’s more appropriation from Charles Dance’s Lord Kitchener, who pre-empts George S. Patton’s famous quote with: “The object of war is not to die for one’s country, but to make the enemy die for theirs.”

Here, Ralph Fiennes – as Conrad’s father, the scheming pacifist Orlando Oxford – engages the sort of comic gear he displayed so brilliantly in The Grand Budapest Hotel and In Bruges. He does get to run the emotional gamut, and can switch to high camp in a heartbeat. Orlando’s tragic trajectory begins at the outset, in the midst of the Boer War, leading up to the shadow of World War One twelve years later. He is well-connected (and more so than anybody knows) and is a confidante of the king’s (Tom Holland, in one of three roles), as well of his prim maid, Polly (a plucky Gemma Arterton), who attempts to keep him in line. But he is closest of all to his son, played as a grown man by Harris Dickinson, on whom he dotes and keeps enfolded in privilege and cotton wool. If Orlando can stop the world to save his offspring, he will find a way to do so. But behind the political machinery of the age is the mad monk Rasputin, played with appropriate hysteria and appetite by Rhys Ifans – and who is bent on destroying the British Empire…

The problem with The King’s Man is that it feels like a history lesson, even if that history has been re-written. There is just so much story. There are the occasional inspired set-pieces and the vertiginous finale is genuinely inventive, funny and cuticle-chewing stuff. And for every unforgivable cliché there is a sudden burst of originality that pushes the film into a sphere of its own. At times it recalls George Roy Hill’s big-screen version of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) – with its surreal madness and scope and anti-war message – and at others it just feels like a self-indulgent romp. It does get better as it goes along, throwing everything into the mix with wild abandon and stylish bravura. So, it is not so much a curate’s egg as a scrambled ostrich egg omelette.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tom Hollander x 3, Harris Dickinson, Daniel Brühl, Djimon Hounsou, Charles Dance, Valerie Pachner, Alison Steadman, August Diehl, David Kross, Alexandra Maria Lara, Branka Katic, Robert Aramayo, Ron Cook, Alexander Shaw, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Barbara Drennan, Benedick Blythe, Ian Kelly, Stanley Tucci. 

Dir Matthew Vaughn, Pro Matthew Vaughn, David Reid and Adam Bohling, Ex Pro Ralph Fiennes, Screenplay Matthew Vaughn and Karl Gajdusek, Ph Ben Davis, Pro Des Darren Gilford, Ed Jason Ballantine and Rob Hall, Music Matthew Margeson and Dominic Lewis, Costumes Michele Clapton, Dialect coach Neil Swain. 

Marv Studios/Cloudy Productions- 20th Century Studios/Walt Disney.
131 mins. UK/USA. 2021. UK Rel: 26 December 2021. US Rel: 22 December 2021. Cert. 15.