In 1914, after his wife is killed by accidental crossfire, the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) has sworn never to be involved in violence again. He vows to keep his only son (Harris Dickinson) from even joining the military, which doesn’t sit well with said son, especially when the world is on the brink of erupting into war. Hoping to avoid the conflict, Oxford sets out to diffuse the situation but soon makes a shocking discovery: the war is actually part of a plot by a secret cabal of history’s worst tyrants and criminal masterminds to wipe out millions, leaving it up to him to race against time to stop them.

Watching Fiennes in action hero mode is a thrill in this prequel to the hit Kingsman series which dials back the clock a good 100 years for a fun, farcical blast from the past.