Since Taron Egerton decided play Elton John and passed on being Gary for a third time in the pretty clever Kingsman flicks, the people running this possible rival to James Bond decided to go the lazy, en vogue direction…a prequel. As if anyone really cared how this fictional organization got started, Harry’s explanation taking 30 seconds wasn’t enough. I do admit I was intrigued by the trailer but that’s as far it got.
The short version is all I’ll go with. King’s story mostly takes place during the years leading up to, through and a bit after World War I. It all comes together rather sloppily as a giant, implausible, even for fiction, conspiracy on par with QAnon. Hell, it’s probably what those morons believe on how WWI happened! The reveal of who’s been pulling Rasputin, Hanussen (general close to the Kaiser), Princip (shot Archduke Ferdinand) and Mata Hari’s strings is equally predictable. Director Matthew Vaughn tries to cover up all the story’s flaws with his past action sequences which made the previous two enjoyable and darkly funny. Hell, the conspiracies in them were much better as both had strong kernels of truth and reality to them. A villain trying to set up a Victorian version of SPECTRE isn’t a concept any audience will buy into. Two reasons. One: The general public doesn’t know nor cares very much about The Great War, it ended a century ago so there’s a minuscule number of people who remember it and today, they would’ve been children. Two: The minority who study, read and love History cannot suspend our sense of disbelief to entertain such a thin premise given what we actually have documented on the real players in the conflict; Rasputin had fallen out of favor with the Czar’s court yet still begged the Czarina not to get involved in the war.
There was one clever touch, the same actor plays the UK’s King George, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm and Russia’s Czar Nicholas. Fitting as they were all the Queen Victoria’s horrible (inbred) grandchildren.
Beyond that little nod, save the two-plus hours of your life and avoid streaming this turd burger on HBO, Hulu or wherever bad movies are offered to fill up weak catalogs.