Matthew Vaughn turns his reckless dad-humour energy to the first world war for a tongue-in-cheek history lesson with some surprising twists
Like a great big playful un-neutered pitbull, Matthew Vaughn’s new Kingsman movie comes crashing into our cinematic lives this Christmas, overturning the furniture and frantically humping everyone’s leg before rolling over on the carpet for you to tickle its tummy or anything else that comes to hand.
The third film in the OTT British spy romp franchise now gives us an epic origin myth, explaining how the Kingsman society came to be located in a posh tailor’s shop in London’s Savile Row, and how it was born in the first world war to battle a certain evil genius whom Vaughn cheerfully makes Scottish. This megalomaniac’s hidden hand is behind historical events you thought you knew all about – such as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the death of Lord Kitchener in 1916 and the Russian revolution in 1917. Bizarrely, the film also suggests that the famous poem Dulce et Decorum Est was actually written by the son of the Kingsman founder, without explaining how it came to be misattributed to a certain Wilfred Owen.
