The King's Man (2021) review

Prequel to both Kingsman: The Secret Service and Kingsman: The Golden Circle goes way back before the start of World War I, where Orlando, Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) sees his wife Emily (Emily Oxford) get killed by a sniper, becomes overprotective of his only son Conrad (Harris Dickinson), has to fight Rasputin (Rhys Ifans) and then track down someone known as "The Shepherd" who is making an international ruckus (and taking his anger out on his goats).  It's all so very tacky and really does treat history as some kind of boisterous cartoon - the "battle" with Russia's "mad mystic" is over-exaggerated (to say the least) - and then it has the gall to ask the audience to feel "sad" when one of the main characters is killed in war.  Fiennes does the whole stiff upper lip thing rather well, which is impressive considering he's in what appears to be a very expensive joke.