My Kingdom

I watched "My Kingdom" on Pay-per-View. Luckily, I didn't pay for it, my friend did. How anyone can like this movie is beyond me. I like Shakespeare very much, and maybe even King Lear, but "My Kingdom" sucked. I am beginning to hate gangster movie, whether they are American or British. In this one, the plot is so confusing and some of the characters I couldn't figure out either. But I don't need to ask questions about the plot or the characters because I really don't care. I don't remember much about King Lear, I saw it a long time ago and obviously, this movie is much worse. It should have never been made in the first place. Lynn Redgrave was a total waste in that role. Yeah, and for those who liked the movie... well, just shoot me.

This film is about gangster in the mean streets of Liverpool about the ups and down of the underworld and one man who was at the top became bottom after what the family did to him. There is some nice acting northing really bloody in the film but can't understand why its an 18 and over to watched this film but anyway it had a fine cast but really felt sorry for the little boy.

I did find Sexy Beast alot better then this but My Kingdom is worth watching and mostly BRITISH GANGSTER FILMS ARE ALOT BETTER THEN AMERICAN GANGSTER FILMS

Give this film 5/10

Yet another film inspired by 'King Lear'; this time set in the world of drug running and violence in rundown Liverpool. This makes it as quirky a setting as Imperial Japan (Ran) or the wild West (Broken Lance) but it doesn't quite come off.

Yes, the parallels are there. Richard Harris as Sandeman gives up control of his gangster empire to his two unlikeable daughters while effectively 'banishing' the youngest; there is a character who has his eyes put out as Gloucester did ... and yet, behind this inspiration the story is thin indeed.

Beautifully shot and atmospheric in its detail of the bleak Merseyside setting, this film disappoints with largely poor acting and a cop-out ending - where we should have had fire and brimstone, we had a whimper.

Richard Harris however is excellent, as ever, in a towering performance which makes me grieve that we never got to see him play Lear for real. There are few actors who could put this complex character across (a variant on the one he played in 'Trojan Eddie', sure, but a meaty role none the less). He's let down by the script but with what he has to work with he is impressive and the one reason to see this film.

My Kingdom was sufficiently entertaining for a rainy Sunday but that is where the upside ends.

Maybe it's that I'm American and have been overexposed to Capone, Gotti and Luciano but the characters in this movie fall miserably short as mobsters. Rule one: Mobsters are scary people. Mother (Mandy) and daughter (Jo) are so wholesome they could pass for GoodHousekeeping covergirls (Mandy even resembles Martha Stewart!). Apparently, Jo (Moll-turned-preppy coed) managed to just "walk away" from her position with "The Chair". Shouldn't she be dead?

Dad is apparently so important that he asks the lowest of thugs, "Do you know who I am?". Where are his bodyguards? Why is he sitting in the cheap seats at the show? Also, it would have been nice if someone clued us in as to how this giant-among-men built his empire: Drugs? Prostitution? Gambling? Stamp-collecting?

Lastly: Where was the trademark blood? Guess the budget was too low for a few bottles of Ketchup.

All-in-all, My Kingdom had a good plot-line and decent actors but it was a little low-calorie for my gangster-genre diet.

It's a fallacy, of course, that you can't go wrong with great source material, judging by the unholy slew of variable Shakespeare knock-offs perennially cluttering cinemas. This is one of the better ones.

Legendary British director-producer Don Boyd (the man behind Scum and The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle), uses 'King Lear' as the premise for an uncompromising tale of family (dis)loyalties, played out against the violent backdrop of gangland Liverpool.

Following his wife's murder in a street mugging, weary crime boss Sandeman (Harris) entrusts his sizeable criminal dynasty to his three daughters - one of whom, Jo (Catherwood), flatly refuses to play ball, as the other power-crazed pair, Tracey (Pilkington) and Kath (Lombard), plot his downfall. Meanwhile, a veteran customs agent, Quick (Bell), is also doggedly on his tail, determined to send him down before they both retire.

Though not the first attempt to ground Shakespeare in such territory (1955's Joe MacBeth was a misguided attempt to transpose the Scottish Play to New York's criminal underworld), My Kingdom delivers with considerable panache. While most of the basic story elements are in place, writers Boyd and 'Guardian' journalist Davies carefully avoid a straight re-telling (many lines here being playful nods to other Shakespeare works, in any case). Instead, they employ smart, darkly funny spins - witness the siblings' competing eulogies by Karaoke to their dead mother.

The performances here, from a top-flight British and Irish cast, are exemplary. Harris, as the shattered Sandeman, proves one needn't have lived the life of a cloistered monk to produce great performances in your seventies.