I Watch Films: The King's Man

 

The King’s Man (2021)

In 1902 Orlando Duke Of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) is bringing humanitarian aid to concentration camps in the Boer War with his wife and young son Conrad. His wife is shot, and makes him promise Conrad will never go to war. He attempts to honour this by creating an intelligence network of domestic servants amongst the great and the good of Europe (and later America) to try and prevent war. His assistants are his butler Shola (Djimon Hounsou) and maid Polly Wilkins (Gemma Atherton). He meets with his friend/ally Lord Kitchener at their tailors, Kingsmans, to avoid drawing attention, only Kitchener and his aide present.

Getting wind of a conspiracy to throw Europe into war by assassinating Archduke Ferdinand, Orlando and Conrad join him on his visit to Sarajevo. Conrad manages to prevent a bomb thrown by Gavrilo Princep from killing him, but later the car takes a wrong turn and Princep shoots him.

This is from real history; unlike in real history this is being masterminded by The Shepherd and his evil society of various advisors and sidekicks across Europe. By plunging Europe into war the crowned heads of England, Germany and Russia will fall, and then he can lead Scotland into independence (?) as revenge for his family’s sheep farm being bankrupted by English moneymen (?).

War breaks out and Orlando won’t let Conrad join up. The Shepherd uses his agent Grigori Rasputin to try and get the Tsar to pull out of the war. Kitchener sails to Russia to try and keep them in the war; his ship is sunk. Orlando and Conrad are spurred into action, go there and fight and kill Rasputin, poisoning, stabbing, shooting, beating and drowning him. Although the circumstances and culprits are different, this is also, loosely, from real history, Rasputin famously hard to kill.

Things start to spiral and the dubious cartoony history gets out of control. The real spy Mata Hari is recruited by The Shepherd to seduce the real President Woodrow Wilson and use the film to blackmail him to stay out the war. There’s some nonsense about the Zimmerman Telegram. Conrad comes of age and joins the Grenadier Guards and Orlando uses his friendship with the King to have him assigned to London. Conrad swaps places with a soldier called Archie Reed, in the Black Watch and goes to the front, sending Archie to his father with the codeword Lancelot to get him out of trouble. A British agent tries to get across the front*; Conrad gets the package but when he identifies himself as Archie Reed is shot as an imposter by someone who knows Reed.

Orlando gives way to grief, then is brought out of it in time to track down Mata Hari and unravel that plot. Unfortunately The Shepherd has recruited a new ace in the hole – Vladimir Lenin, who brings Russia out of the war at the same time they convince the US to join in. However there’s a clue – Mata Hari’s scarf is made from very rare Cashmere wool which has only one source (they discover when they take it to the tailors). They now have The Shepherd’s lair.

A prequel to the Kingsman series, somehow I find this cavalier attitude to history in bad taste. Not so much the slapstick attempts to assassinate and counter-assassinate various historical figures (in a loosely historical way), but to then treat the death of a pair of fictional characters as great tragedies… while horrendous wars go on in the background. I don’t know. Also overlong and busy, too many semi-historical setpieces to get through.

Watch This: Historical action spy thriller with lots of high energy setpieces and entertaining historical nods
Don’t Watch This: Absolutely no respect for any history, which it clearly knows, also too long and convoluted

* I don’t know, maybe send it via a neutral country? It’s 1917, military police and checkpoints to keep civilians and spies from the front and soldiers on it are well developed. I’m not saying that, say, getting into Switzerland or the Netherlands is simple but there aren’t entire armies shooting at people who try to cross.