KINGS: HALLE BERRY AND DANIEL CRAIG BURN WITH LOVE IN THE HELL OF LOS ANGELES [REVIEW FROM TFF]
So much talent wasted in the drama directed by the director of Mustang and presented at the Turin Film Festival
Los Angeles as Baghdad. Exactly like the areas most torn by war and hatred in the East. So we see her in Kings , a drama that takes us back in time. Exactly at the time of LAPD 's beating of Rodney King . In the film directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven (former director of Mustang ) - presented in the Mobile Festival section of the Torino Film Festival - we witness the descent of the City of Angels to hell in the days of the riots of 1992.
The infernal and chaotic sequences are of great impact. in which we see the "Riot" unleashed. The public is entrusted to the faces of Halle Berry - perfect to sculpt the terror of a mother on her face - andDaniel Craig - freer than Bond, but not served properly by an untrustworthy character. Berry is a single mother who has turned her home into a real refuge for young orphans. In the first scene we see her greeting her eight adoptive sons, moving in the different rooms of the apartment in a surprising and tender sequence. Craig is his neighbor a little 'crazy. The only white in the neighborhood. A misanthrope who hides a heart of gold. And that will protect the woman's family during the riots.
Racism explodes and eaves on the screen, and as long as it remains a film of denunciation, an angry work capable of transmitting the disgusting and furious taste of racial hatred to the spectator, then Kings works effectively. At one point the director looks for the path of salvation and does it initially in an interesting way, building erotic tension in a dreamlike scene between the two protagonists . A moment that comes as a twist and causes a laugh in the viewer. Also for embarrassment. An unsettling sequence created by a director who dares. And that then precipitates the film .
Soon after, Kings turns into Paul Haggis' worst Crash. Eroticism leaves the scene and gives way to interracial romanticism as a message of salvation: the only emotional force able to extinguish the flames that surround the City of Angels. This honey overdose makes the film lose its share. Like Crash by Haggis, Kings also relies on intense sequences on racism, music with long notes made to post to push the viewer into the soul of the characters .. but at that point the characters are no longer interesting.
Talent was there. Visual. Narrative. But it did not last. Disappointment is the first word you think of during the end credits. The last one when you stop thinking about the movie.