The King Maker

This is just a bad movie. With what seemed to be quite a nice budget it had potential to be much better. It almost were. With the heroine beautiful almost like Salma Hayek, hero fighting almost like Jackie Chan, battles and duels almost like in Crouching Tiger..., music almost like in, say, Conan... etc. Almost. But in the end it's just dull and it is hard to find anything interesting in it. Maybe apart of John Rhys-Davies flying in duel like those warriors in Hero or before-mentioned Crouching Tiger... I am really ashamed of poor old John. He is after all quite a good actor and deserves much better. So as you - so if you still have a chance just watch something else.

Unfortunately, this has been showing on Star Movies here in Thailand for the last week or so. It's complete rubbish acting. As another member said, this movie is a good example of 'how not to act.' I haven't seen a movie so poorly acted in a long time. The actors (can you call them 'actors'?) are completely flat and deliver their lines with the passion of a dead dog. I would say that in order to truly understand how bad the acting is, you would have to see the movie... but that would be akin to torture.

I cringe as the leading lady delivers her lines, and the rest of the cast with their accents (fake or contrived) is equally heinous. Another actress with the fake British accent was pretty, yes, but good lord was her accent terrible. Mix that with her (lack of) acting and you have a disaster. She should just have said nothing and I could have accepted her as the pretty girl. Oh my, we just got to the scene where the leading lady's lover says "Really me?" after a forced crying scene from her. Laughable. No, really, I just laughed out loud.

The sets and the art directors offer some saving grace to the film. Some of the sets are colorful and some of the scenes are rather nice (minus the actors).

The old magic potion lady? What?! Another member mentioned the 'modern' love song that was in the movie. Totally inappropriate for a period piece set some 500 years ago.

I understand the movie was considered 'Big Budget' in Thailand at the time of it's production. I would be seriously upset if I were the producer of this movie. Just goes to show that money does not necessarily make a good (or even mediocre) film.

I would give the King Maker a 1 out of 10, but the costumes and sets make save the film from such a rating. 2 out of 10.

Up to this point, Gentle Rain was the movie I found the worst in history. It has been supplanted by this 'blockbuster' out of Asia. It has one "star" and it is John Rhys Davies. He is way out of shape to be the swashbuckling, magical flying baddie he is cast here. The rest of these people couldn't act their way out of a junior high school play. No clichés were missed in the dialogue, and the special effects were phoned in as often as possible.

It is fairly easy to see that somebody in Asia had some bucks and needed to create a vehicle for some actors they wanted to throw money at. Or maybe it was a director or a writer that needed a credit. My guess is that any career with this movie in it's credential

Do yourself a major favor and don't watch this movie. A hundred Thanksgivings couldn't consume this turkey.

The one funny scene was unintentional. The brother of the King appears on the scene. The king? A handsome, older, short Asian actor. (Bad actor.) The brother? A six foot European. (Also a bad actor.) No excuses were made for this. They just expected us not to notice that this poor man's Jet Li's brother was a wannabe Pierce Brosnan in a cheap dimestore "Injun" wig right out of an old western movie from the forties.

The King Maker is a film about a series of real (citation needed) events that occurred during the Portuguese Occupation in Indochina.

Although the costumes and art direction are commendable, the movie still fails to impress the viewer. The acting, in particular, was extremely poor. Some of the actors are trying hard to let tears down and the accents, both real and fake, are extremely irritating. The storyline was also too dumb and too stupid to be true and it seemed more like a history lesson. The movie couldn't even capture that sort of regal and century-old air and it looked more like a botched attempt to make an Asian version of Elizabeth.

Final say? Costumes and art direction give the film a breath of fresh air, but the execution was extremely poor and the actors couldn't even give natural bursts of emotion. In short, the movie sounded more like hullabaloo than a script.

Evidently when you offer a actor enough money they will do anything. I am not sure how much John Rys-Daves got, but most of the money he made should go to his fans as an apology for even being associated with such a ROTTEN movie. The special effects were worse then effects from the 1950's B movies and the acting of the rest of the cast was even worse. As to how bad the acting was a child gave the second best performance in my opinion. The English was terribly accented and I think no one could really even speak English they just memorized how the words should sound instead of memorizing the script and trying to make their character both "life-like" and real.