The King’s Man Parent Guide

After losing his wife Emily (Alexandra Maria Lara) to a Boer sniper in South Africa, Duke Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) becomes a pacifist, swearing to keep his son, Conrad (Harris Dickinson) away from violence. But that’s a task which seems increasingly impossible in 1914, as the world careens towards war. While both Orlando and Conrad were present at the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (Ron Cook), they were unable to prevent it, and the situation in Europe has become even more dire. With the continent plunged into war, Orlando decides that some action must be taken, if only to prevent Conrad from enlisting in the British Army. The pair travel to Russia to try and keep the Empire both intact and in the war, and both of those tasks will require a confrontation with the apparent power behind the Tsar’s throne: the mad monk, Grigori Rasputin (Rhys Ifans).

This is a movie fragmented by an identity crisis. It’s not sure if it wants to be a Kingsman style high-octane action flick with its tongue welded firmly to its cheek, or if it wants to be a historical drama about the horrors of war. It really can’t be both. The King’s Man spends more than half its time trying to play up the father-son drama over whether Conrad will join the army or not. While that’s a staple of WWI movies, it also completely kills the fun, devil-may-care attitude the franchise has built in the other two films.

The problem is this is a terrible World War I movie. Sure, some of the sets and costumes work, but almost everything else is ahistorical gibberish of the worst order. Somehow, The King’s Man has managed to talk about the Great War without ever mentioning France, which if you’re even passingly familiar with the war, is an incredible omission. France, the nation where much of the war was fought and which sacrificed well over a million lives, isn’t even an afterthought. The film wants to play up the familial relationships between George V, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Tsar Nicholas, and historical consequences be damned. As far as the movie is concerned, the only combatants in the First World War were England, Germany, and Russia.

Were that not enough, it’s blandly predictable from start to finish. I managed to correctly identify the mysterious villain of the piece within the first 15 minutes. I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m some sort of cinematic Hercule Poirot, but the script just makes it absurdly easy.

Fans of the original films likely expect that this is not a family film, but not to the same extent as the rest of the franchise. The violence is less graphic, there’s far less innuendo, and considerably less cussing. In fact, apart from the profanity, this is essentially a PG-13 action flick with a weak grasp on history and a poor plot. With the price of movie tickets being what it is, and the risk of viral exposure being as bad as it is, I’d expect a little more effort from filmmakers if they expect me to turn up.