The King's Man (2022) - Movie Review

I have been both anticipating and dreading sitting down to watch this feature in the cinema. And for reasons beyond the larger-scale “Sarge, we keep getting orders to let the virus win” idiocy that is the third year of the pandemic. On the one hand, it’s the latest Kingsman film, a series I have grown to love in all its suave ridiculousness, and having seen all of Matthew Vaughn’s directorial efforts to date, the man is yet to make a bad film. Flawed films? Oh, certainly; The Golden Circle had its share of issues. But never anything outright bad. As such, I’ve been hedging my bets on this film as my first review (on this blog, at least) for 2022, wanting to start things off on a good note.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) - Movie Review

'Mark Millar' and 'movie adaptation' have a very odd relationship with each other: While the films adapted from his work are mostly good, they take a lot of liberties with the source material. Kick-Ass, through its re-writing of Big Daddy's character, completely shifted the tone of the film and made it a lot less bleak which actually worked to the film’s benefit. Wanted, save for the main character’s abilities and backstory, has pretty much nothing else to do with the original book, a definite shame given its initial premise. Since Millar and director Matthew Vaughn struck gold before with Kick-Ass, it would make sense that he would also bring his book The Secret Service to the big screen. It doesn’t hurt that Vaughn was co-plotter on the original book as well.