Message from the King

This movie shows you what cinema should look like. This old craft of making movies with tempo, cinematography, editing and score is deprived of all imprints of judgement, opinion or the director's indulging in his pretentious personality as many directors strive to do these days; it seems that the director has nothing to prove but only the commitment to telling a beautiful masterful story filmed with excellence and craftsmanship. The goal here is to learn what real cinema is. Everything serves the story, everything is well balanced. It's an exercise in genre and a director's pure intentions to making only cinema. You don't get pitiful emotion or euphoric fake bliss you only marvel in excellence. No shot is overrated, no emotion is fake. This is a work of a master. And these days masters are found in Europe. It brought me back to my film school days when I was in awe with the great directors of past and how they can create a work of art without the excesses of today's cinematic work that is riddled with uselessness and has no soul or beauty. Mind you, this is not a masterpiece, far from it; rather this is a lesson of what true cinema is... Watch it and be in awe...

The story is nothing really special. Guy comes to LA to look for his sister and he gets tangled in the mess that she was in. He uses his tough South African skills to punish people. Liam Neeson did it with great success, Chadwick Boseman does it too.

It was the acting that was pretty decent, though, as well as the portrait of the city as a corrupt place that feeds on hope and takes it all away. The "message from the king" is that you may have a lot of money and live in a big rich place and still be just as rotten as the most crime ridden places in Africa.

Bottom line: a linear and predictable story that only highlighted the good acting and subtle message on the background.

"It's Bianca. She's got a brother. He's in town, says he has what we've been looking for. He's out of control, Mike. You told me Bianca was not a problem anymore. Bianca isn't a problem anymore. I'm afraid that's his problem."

Those who imagine the Los Angeles metropolis to be idealistically beautiful, they should adjust that view after watching "Message from the King". The less beautiful part of Los Angeles is used here. An impoverished neighborhood where the vast majority of residents live in poverty and where crime and drugs are an obvious part of society. Ash gray ghettos full of human suffering. And that's being emphasized by drizzly weather. The crowded mortuary is a reflection of these fading slums. A collection of nobodies who died because of an overdose, madness (drowned in a bathtub as an imaginary fish) and gang violence.

This is what Jacob King (Chadwick Boseman) faces when he arrives in L.A. The reason why he's staying in the city of angels is the sudden disappearance of his younger sister Bianca (Sibongile Mlambo). Soon he discovers the sore situation his sister got herself into and what it did to her : she earned a spot in the mortuary with a name tag on her big toe. The search for the murderers of his younger sister brings him in touch with all kind of figures. Trish (Natalie Martinez) the loyal neighbor points him in the right direction after which he meets a violent gang of Balkan criminals run by a certain Zico (Lucan Melkonian). Then there's the rich dentist Wentworth (Luke Evans) and the wealthy movie producer Preston (Alfred Molina). And let me tell you. Some of them are getting to know the bicycle chain he just bought, in a less pleasant way.

For Jacob, these L.A. neighborhoods probably still look like charming neighborhoods compared to where he comes from. His sister Bianca, his deceased brother Isaac and Jacob himself, lived the largest part of their life in South Africa in the Cape Flat townships, a sandy area south of Cape Town and better known as "Apartheid's dumping ground". A dilapidated community where gangs rule. Both in the slums and in prison. Such as "The Number Gangs". Isaac was a member of this notorious gang, until his death. Reason enough for Bianca to turn her back on her home country and to seek salvation in the United States.

You could say this movie is a cheaper version of "The Equalizer" with Boseman having an equal personality as Denzel Washington. A cold-blooded but alert person who has control over his violent eruptions and who accurately follows the traces to solve the criminal puzzle in the end. However, the ultimate motive remains quite mysterious. Perhaps the only minus I could find in this hard-core, ultra-dark movie. In fact, it's an ordinary revenge film that differs slightly from others because of its quirky atmosphere and tone. And afterwards I discovered the film was directed by a fellow countryman : Fabrice du Welz. Maybe that's why this movie displays a kind of willfulness.

Even though this action-flick is soaked by cliché elements (corrupt policemen, a cunning politician and a prostitute (Teresa "Lights Out" Palmer) who plays the Good Samaritan), you can speak of a stylish end product. No explicit violence scenes (the result is usually more explicit than the action itself) and a few star-like interpretations like that of Teresa Palmer. But especially Chadwick Boseman impressed. A man with few words, but hard negotiating techniques. From the very first instance, I was fascinated by him. In my opinion, this is yet again a rough diamond that simmers on Netflix undiscovered. Don't let anybody stop you from watching this when you bump into it somewhere, because this will surely surprise you.

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Ooh boy, here's a toughie.

Chadwick Boseman, we barely knew ye. Two seconds after you broke onto the A List, you left us all in shock when you departed this world, the consensus being that it was well before your time. While arguments can be made one way or the other about such things, one thing is certain:

You made an impact.

MESSAGE FROM THE KING is not the best movie I have ever seen, unfortunately. It has pacing issues, continuity problems, and questionable dialogue choices. All that being said, Chadwick steals every scene with his powerful performance, and at least that's worth something.

It's not all bad. A man from South Africa comes to Los Angeles, searching for what happened to his missing sister. Without spoiling too much of the film, he finds out, and then wants to settle scores for what has happened.

In an attempt to create an original plot, some things get lost. There is a scent of mystery here, well played by the creators... we don't know who Jacob King is, or WHAT he is, beyond being a loving sibling who's well beyond furious as to the events as they unfold, and that part of the film works fine. In an effort to keep the mystery going, we are given a seedy, not terribly friendly portrait of Los Angeles life, and the downfalls some who go looking for dreams fall into.

Teresa Palmer plays a kindly neighbor, one who is involved in doing whatever is necessary to keep the roof over her and her daughter's heads. There is chemistry here, at first easily dismissed, but I have to speak about a scene which is my favorite of the film, in which she surprises him in a diner, sits down with him, and thanks him for not being the same as everyone else she's met since she fell into the luring trap of Hollywood. The exchange between the two of them is touching, heartfelt, heart wrenching, and immediately breathes life into what could have been easily written off as a simple revenge movie.

The level of violence here is high, perhaps a bit too high in certain scenes. Violence done realistically is rarely a treat to the eyes... I remember a scene from DRIVE in which a woman's head is taken off with a shotgun blast and you can see every gory detail of brain, blood, and bone as her head explodes in slow motion, and I find it jarring every time I see the movie. It doesn't need to be there, and sometimes in this film the violence comes off in a similar fashion.

I also mentioned the dialogue before... there's a lot of empty words thrown in the usual manner of macho bull and cliched banter. Alfred Molina and Luke Evans, specifically, have the worst lines to spout here, as they have to shout pointless insults back and forth at each other that only serve to take up time, instead of entertain us or keep the plot moving.

There's also a few plot twists that seem overly heavy, once again done for the sake of originality but lacking in a real sense of logic or reasoning that you accept just because you don't really have any other choice once you get into the parts of the movie that really work... you kind of just have to roll with the punches.

All in all, it's not bad. If you love and miss Chadwick, give it a roll. It's not as good as PANTHER. I suppose, in the end, when we remember him, nothing he did is going to compare with that.

Godspeed, Mr. Boseman. You will be missed.

Fairly decent, memorable for Chadwick Boseman's performance and some pretty tense scenes, but not really in the same ball park as some of the best revenge movies.