''Kings'' is a 2017 English-language

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

written and directed by

Deniz Gamze Ergüven Deniz Gamze Ergüven (born 4 June 1978), is a Turkish-French film director best known for her debut feature film ''Mustang''. Early life and education Ergüven was born in Ankara, Turkey but moved to France in the 1980s. She grew up and went to ...

. The film stars Halle Berry and

Daniel Craig Daniel Wroughton Craig (born 2 March 1968) is an English-American actor who gained international fame playing the secret agent James Bond in the film series, beginning with '' Casino Royale'' (2006) and in four further instalments, up to '' ...

. The film had its world premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, 2017. The film was screened during three days as part of Stockholm's International Film Festival held in November 2017. The film was screened at the

Torino Film Festival The Torino Film Festival (also called the Turin Film Festival, TFF) is an international film festival held annually in Turin, Italy. Held every November, it is the second largest film festival in Italy, following the Venice Film Festival. It was f ...

in Italy before opening wide by Spring 2018.

Plot

Millie Dunbar is a single mother with eight adopted children in

South Los Angeles South Los Angeles, also known as South Central Los Angeles or simply South Central, is a region in southwestern Los Angeles County, lying mostly within the city limits of Los Angeles, south of downtown. It is "defined on Los Angeles city maps as ...

. Her neighbour, Obie, is the only white man in the neighborhood. Together they form an unlikely team during the

Rodney King riots The 1992 Los Angeles riots, sometimes called the 1992 Los Angeles uprising and the Los Angeles Race Riots, were a series of riots and civil disturbances that occurred in Los Angeles County, California, in April and May 1992. Unrest began in So ...

Cast

* Halle Berry as Millie Dunbar *

as Obie Hardison * Lamar Johnson as Jesse Cooper * Kaalan 'KR' Walker as William McGee * Rachel Hilson as Nicole Patterson *

Issac Ryan Brown Issac Ryan Brown (born July 12, 2005) is an American actor and singer. He is best known for his portrayal of Booker in the Disney Channel sitcom ''Raven's Home'', which earned him a nomination at the 48th Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Prin ...

as Shawnte * Callan Farris as Ruben * Serenity Reign Brown as Peaches * Reece Cody as Tiger * Gary Yavuz Perreau as Carter * Aiden Akpan as Jordan * Ce’Onna Johnson as Sherridanne * Kirk Baltz and Peter Mackenzie as Police Officers * Kevin Carroll as Manager * Davis Pasquesi as Howard Quartay Denaya played

Latasha Harlins Latasha Harlins (January 1, 1976 – March 16, 1991) was an African-American girl who was fatally shot at age 15 by Soon Ja Du ( ko, 두순자) after Latasha knocked Soon Ja Du to the ground, a 51-year-old Korean-American convenience store owner ...

, while an uncredited Rick Ravanello played Officer Camello.

Production

Ergüven started working on the film when she graduated from

La Fémis La Fémis (French: ''École Nationale Supérieure des Métiers de l'Image et du Son''; "National Superior School for the Professions of Image and Sound", formerly known as the '' Institut des hautes études cinématographiques'', IDHEC) is a Fre ...

film school in 2006. It took her three years to write the script as she frequented

for research. In 2011, she was invited to the

Cinéfondation La ''Cinéfondation'' is a foundation under the aegis of the Cannes Film Festival, created to inspire and support the next generation of international filmmakers. It was created in 1998 by Gilles Jacob. Since then it has developed complementary ...

workshop at the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

, where she met Alice Winocour. After struggling to find producers and financiers for the project, she went on instead to write with Winocour and direct ''

Mustang The mustang is a free-roaming horse of the Western United States, descended from horses brought to the Americas by the Spanish. Mustangs are often referred to as wild horses, but because they are descended from once- domesticated animals, the ...

'', which was released in 2015 and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The success of ''Mustang'' finally allowed her to make the film. Principal photography began on December 27, 2016 in Los Angeles. Filming lasted until mid February 2017.

Reception

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has an approval rating of 13% based on 38 reviews, and an

average rating In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...

of 3.53/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "''Kings'' has good intentions, a talented cast, and the basis for an incredible fact-based story; unfortunately, they don't amount to much more than a missed opportunity." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 34 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".

References

External links