It Truly Was a Great War

I'm not sure why, but we watched The King's Man (2021). I guess it was for Matthew Vaughan's masterful blend of comic violence and conservative fashion.

It starts in Africa during the Boer War. Ralph Fiennes, with his wife and young son, is delivering Red Cross supplies to Kitchener (Charles Dance). An assassin takes aim at Kitchener, but hits Fiennes' wife. Then their aide, Djimon Hansou, dispatches the assassin.

The son (now played by Harris Dickinson) grows up in luxury, as Fiennes is the Duke of Oxford. He is trained well, even in fighting skills, tutored by Hansou and no-nonsense nanny Gemma Arterton. But the loss of his mother has made Fiennes overprotective. When Fiennes and Dickinson go to Sarajevo to help the Arch-Duke Ferdinand in his diplomacy, they avert his assassination. And just like in real-life, they let him stumble into the assassin again, and he is killed. This only confirms Fiennes fears for his son.

But he doesn't yet realize that the assassin was part of a secret plot to pit the cousins King George, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Tsar Nicholas against each other. Other members in the conspiracy include Rasputin, Mata Hari, and Lenin. 

When the Great War starts Dickinson is just of age, and his father can't prevent him from joining up. But his father can put out the word that he is to be kept safe in a desk job. So he swaps identities with another soldier, and heads to the front. He performs an amazing feat of heroism, and, due to the identity swap, is shot in the head by a Scottish soldier.

It's pretty shocking to have what looked like the main character killed at this point, but, well, he was kind of drag. What the British call "wet". And this means that we get a lot more Ralph Fiennes. In fact, we get to see him try to seduce Rasputin (Rhys Ifans), then poison, shot, stab and drown him. 

In fact, there's at least a third of the movie to go after Dickinson gets killed, mostly revolving around the Zimmerman telegram and getting the US into the war. But there are all kinds of fun fights and goings on.

So, while this isn't a particularly good movie (even compared to the previous two), it does star a lot more Ralph Fiennes than you'd expect from an action movie. Funny, we got great older actors slumming in action trash in Operation Fortune as well.