THE KING’S MAN REVIEW

“The King’s Man”, Is a prequel in the Kingsman series, and, unlike the previous two movies, this one fails to excite- for the most part. The first two Kingsman movies are so loved due to cool, suave characters, exhilarating action, and suspenseful spy work. “The King’s Man” is devoid of almost all of that. It doesn’t feel like a spy movie, but rather a political war movie. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when the rare action/fight sequences and spying, is much more riveting than the sluggish politics and noisy warfare that dominates the runtime, you truly do keep wishing it reverts it’s focus to the former.

The plot of the movie revolves around how secret organisations were involved in setting off and ending WWI. Sadly, the movie leans in on this thought provoking premise far too little as these organisations and spies take the back seat as the movie focuses on the “what”, which is boring politics sprinkled with the generic trench warfare, much more than the “how”, which includes assassinations, encrypted messages, poisoned cakes and scandalous tapes, most of which were scarcely utilized and almost felt insignificant. The movie does seem to get back on its feet in an exciting third act, after grabbing back the audience’s dwindling attention with shocking turn in the story, which I’m not going to spoil. Unfortunately, this is all hindered by the final fight scene in which we have a not-so-shocking and almost unnecessary villain face reveal that the movie spent a lot of time building up to.

It’s not all bad though. The movie does have a wonderful scene set in Russia, that includes… Rasputin. Yes, that weird dude from your history books. Rasputin in this movie is delightfully weird and the scenes including him and incredibly funny, while also being nerve-wrackingly intense. This is where the movie is at its best, as it returns to classic Kingsman form with its spying and unique fight sequences and comedy. However this is short lived as the scene only lasts about 15 minutes.

Score- 5.5/10, not worth buying a ticket for.