The King (2019)
This is an odd little duck of a film. It’s an adaptation of Shakespeare’s three Henry plays: Henry IV (a two-parter), and Henry V. That last one is kind of, you know, famous. It gives us the St. Crispin’s day speech, and the line “once more into the breach”. It put Kenneth Branagh on the cinematic map in 1989 and blew the doors open for the wave of Shakespeare adaptations that have arrived since. And that’s kind of a problem. Because as much as this is a great story (young prince Hal gets unwillingly drawn into a Campbellian hero journey that sees him become King Henry V of England and conquer France via his victory at Agincourt in 1415), it’s something WILLIAM FREAKING SHAKESPEARE has already written.
Watching this in late 2021, with Chalamet in theaters assuming a now-galactic throne, the film feels a lot like the 1984 version of Dune. It’s a reworked plainer-language version of a famous epic. Lynch’s wyrding-module acid trip suffered in comparison to the source novel, and The King suffers in comparison to the “original” Shakespeare. That’s unfair (because it’s not bad on its own) but unavoidable.
Still, everybody involved gives it a game go. Joel Edgerton is especially fun as Falstaff (though he co-wrote the script, so … ). Sean Harris is having a great time as the long-suffering realpolitik courtier. And Robert Pattinson (yes, that Robert Pattinson) threatens to steal every scene he’s in much the same way Sting hijacked Dune based on his loving-being-evil scenery chewing. And it’s not hard to watch Chalamet here and see exactly why he got cast in the new Dune: he’s superb, if unconventional, and has the Charisma a king needs. Shakespeare this movie ain’t (and it struggles to get out of the bard’s shadow), but it’s trying to tell the old story with new life; that makes it worth checking out once.
3 stars of 5: I liked it, but there’s no real reason to watch it twice.