Directed by Deniz Gamze Erguven

Starring – Halle Berry, Daniel Craig, Lamar Johnson

The Plot – The movie stars Oscar winner Halle Berry and Daniel Craig as citizens of the same South Central Los Angeles neighborhood set against a backdrop of rising racial tensions during the verdict of the Rodney King trial in 1992. In her first English-language film following the critically acclaimed Mustang, writer-director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s film tells a dramatic story of family bonds and the lengths one mother will go to bring her children home. Halle Berry stars as MILLIE, a tough and protective single foster mother of eight who must ally herself with OBIE (Daniel Craig), her neighbor and a local loose cannon, when racial tensions start to run dangerously high. As the civil unrest in Los Angeles grows following the acquittal of four of the officers accused of beating Rodney King, Millie and Obie must navigate the chaos that surrounds them in order to ensure her children’s safety. KINGS focuses on the fragility of family relationships and touches on turmoil and tensions of the past, which sadly prove to be more relevant than ever in today’s social and political climate.

Rated R for violence, sexual content/nudity, and adult language throughout)

POSITIVES

– While my faith with Erguven as a storyteller took a severe beating, my feeling on her as a visionary only prospered as the film went on. Filling the atmosphere with unlimited smoke to convey the uncertainty of the unveiling situation, Deniz captures the L.A riots ruthlessly, and does so with such rattling intensity that depicts the danger.

– Enticing camera angles. Much of the movements in running sequences or car chases are noteworthy enough, breathing much needed energy into the film where the narrative often spins out of control, but it’s more so in the character profiling angles where I was most impressed. In shooting this mostly kid-majority cast, cinematographer David Chizallet chooses to get up close and document their reactions to seeing the world burn around them. It’s in this influence where you understand the gears of debauchery spinning in their brains.

– There isn’t much to brag about when it comes to performances, but Lamar Johnson as Jesse was easily the shining example for me. While the two big name leads are asleep at the wheel, Johnson’s impeccable guidance and guardianship present the film with its lone HUMAN character. I use that word because Jesse feels like the careful link between normalcy and rioting that becomes blurred with each passing scene, and the film takes great value in depending on Johnson to document the wheels coming off.

NEGATIVES

– How can a film about the L.A Riots feel so inconsequential? I use that word because it’s unclear about midway through where this film is headed, as well as how it plans on reaching its message despite the fact that such little time has been invested in it. The screenplay is every bit as disjointed as it is floundering, and there’s no better example of this than the ending that slowly drifts away.

– I don’t get to talk about the negatives of quick pacing often, but ‘Kings’ is the highlighted example of such rarity. The editing intrudes far too quicky for far too often, there is little momentum built from scene-to-scene, and sequences happen that don’t add any kind of urgency to the film. This is why I mentioned disjointed earlier, because some of these scenes feel so out of place to the continuity of the film, as there were many points when I couldn’t understand the vast character changes taking place.

– My opinion is that they broke Halle Berry and Daniel Craig out of a mental institution for this film. For the first half of the movie, they’re not even a concern, going long spans of screen time without an appearance, then in the second half they take the reigns in emoting two off-the-rocker personalities. Besides the fact that this romantic link simply doesn’t gel, it is all cemented in one of the strangest shot and acted sex dream scenes that I have ever seen. Almost laughable for its lack of passion and adolescent dialogue.

– Pay Per View please. How this movie got into theaters still amazes me. Whether it’s the lack of impact in all 87 minutes of screen time, or the 63 seconds of production team emblems that opens up the movie, it’s clear that this one has its big screen tribulations.

– When you look at a riveting film that deals with racial tensions competently like ‘Detroit’, you understand why something like ‘Kings’ is dead on arrival. The child characters are completely out of control due to an overall lack of adult supervision, and while that may evoke some sadness with the parent inside all of us, you can’t help but feel that they are only adding fuel to the fire of these racist white cops with their own character flaws. Where the former does it better is presenting characters that we can embrace the empathetic side with. No one likes to see bad things happen to bad people, so why is this so hard for Deniz to grasp?

– It’s not tone-deaf, but tone-neurotic. Further proof of this film not knowing what it wants to be is in the mind-numbingly awful tonal decisions that limit an audience’s ability to immerse themselves in this era of a burning world. In doing so, the film mixes an actual intriguing coming-of-age story with these kids on the streets for an Abbott and Costello routine that sharply contrasts and contradicts. If the film can’t keep its focus for longer than a scene, then how can we as an interested third party audience?

– In combining this devastating period in American history with a one-household narrative, the film strongly undercuts any and every kind of tension that should be easy to capitalize on. For most of the film, I told myself that I would rather see a film on Rodney King’s night from hell, instead of this foster home that doesn’t grow with the events elevating around it. Telling it from this single perspective limits the importance of something so immense, giving the uninformed an irresponsible look at the who, what, and why of the situation.

3/10