[Film] The King's Man (2021)

The King's Man 

In 1902, British aristocrat Orlando, Duke of Oxford, his wife Emily, and their young son Conrad visit a concentration camp in South Africa during the Second Boer War while working for the Red Cross. Emily is killed during a Boer sniper attack on the camp, causing pacifistic Orlando to determine that the world needs someone to head off such conflicts before they occur. 

Twelve years later, Orlando has recruited two of his servants, Shola and Polly, into his spy network dedicated to protecting the United Kingdom and the British Empire from the approaching Great War. Conrad, eager to fight, is forbidden to join up by the protective Orlando, who persuades Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, not to let him join the army. 

At the behest of Kitchener, Conrad and Orlando ride with Orlando's friend Archduke Franz Ferdinand through Sarajevo, and Conrad saves the Archduke from a bomb thrown by Gavrilo Princip, a rebel intent on sparking a war. Later, however, Princip happens to run into the Archduke's entourage again, this time succeeding in fatally shooting the Archduke and his wife Sophie. Orlando's group, relying on information from other dignitaries' socially invisible servants, learn that Princip was part of a plot to pit the German, Russian, and British empires against each other. The group, headed by the mysterious Shepherd from a secret mountain-top headquarters, have their own network of agents, including the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin, a trusted adviser to Tsar Nicholas of Russia. 

Rasputin, on the orders of the Shepherd, manipulates Tsar Nicholas by poisoning his young son Alexei, and only curing him when Nicholas promises to leave the war. Conrad is notified of Rasputin's manipulation by his cousin, Prince Felix Yusupov. Knowing the Western Front will be left vulnerable if Russia leaves the war, Conrad delivers this information to Kitchener and his aide-de-camp Major Morton, who set sail for Russia. Their ship is torpedoed by a submarine and sunk. Word of Kitchener's death reaches Orlando, spurring him to head to Russia with Shola, Polly, and Conrad to deal with Rasputin once and for all. At a Christmas party hosted by Prince Yusupov, Orlando, Shola, Conrad, and Rasputin fight, the skirmish only ending when Polly shoots and kills Rasputin. 

At the Shepherd's orders, Erik Jan Hanussen, an adviser to Kaiser Wilhelm II, sends the Zimmermann Telegram, hoping to distract Britain and the United States. Although the message is intercepted by British intelligence and given to the United States, President Woodrow Wilson refuses to join the war without concrete proof. The Shepherd recruits Vladimir Lenin and orders his Bolsheviks to overthrow the Tsar and remove Russia from the war, sending an assassin to kill the Romanovs. 

Now of age, Conrad is commissioned into the Grenadier Guards against his father's wishes. Orlando meets with King George V, who summons Conrad back to Britain. Conrad sends back a young soldier named Lance Corporal Archie Reid in his place, giving him the codename "Lancelot" to send a message to his father. Disguised as Archie, a member of the Black Watch, Conrad volunteers for a mission into No-Man's Land to retrieve information from a British agent wounded there, but is mistaken for a German spy upon his return and executed at gunpoint. However, the information he retrieved from the spy is the proof President Wilson required to enter the war. 

Orlando's group learn President Wilson is being blackmailed with a film of him being seduced by one of the Shepherd's agents, Mata Hari. Orlando locates her at the American embassy and after overpowering her recovers her cashmere scarf, made from rare wool only found in one specific mountainous region. Correctly identifying this location as the Shepherd's base of operations, Orlando, Shola, and Polly head there and fight their way inside. Morton, who had faked his own death and sunk the battleship, is revealed to be the Shepherd. Orlando and Shola fight and kill Morton while Polly recovers the original film negative of Wilson's seduction, allowing his country's forces to mobilise. 

A year after the war, Orlando purchases the Kingsman Tailor Shop as a front for his organisation. Orlando, Shola, Polly, King George, Archie Reid, and a U.S. Ambassador form the original Kingsman, each assuming a codename from the King Arthur legend to honour Conrad. In a mid-credit scene, Hanussen is revealed to have taken on the Shepherd identity, and introduces Vladimir Lenin to the Romanovs' killer: a young Adolf Hitler.