Movie Review: Kings

Kings * ½ / *****

Directed by: Deniz Gamze Ergüven.

Written by: Deniz Gamze Ergüven.

Starring: Halle Berry (Millie Dunbar), Daniel Craig (Obie Hardison), Lamar Johnson (Jesse Cooper), Kaalan Walker (William MCgee), Rachel Hilson (Nicole Patterson), Issac Ryan Brown (Shawnte), Callan Farris (Ruben), Serenity Reign Brown (Peaches), Reece Cody (Tiger), Aiden Akpan (Jordan), Gary Yavuz Perreau (Carter), Ce'Onna Meilani Johnson (Sherridane), Lorenz Arnell (Damon), Lorrie Odom (Angela), Lewis T. Powell (Quinn), Flor de Maria Chahua (Maria), Quartay Denaya (Latasha Harlins), Janet Song (Soon Ja Du), Richie Stephens (Officer Bilson).

 

Deniz Gamze Ergüven is hardly the first filmmaker to hit a sophomore slump – but I have a hard time remembering the last filmmaker who crashed harder with their second film, after a debut film as good as her first. That film was Mustang (2015) – which earned the Turkish director a lot of just acclaim, comparisons to Sofia Coppola, and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film – at the time, I may have even liked it more than the eventual winner, the wonderful Son of Saul. That film gave her the clout to go back to Kings – a screenplay she had written years before, but could not find the financing for. The film made the festival rounds last fall, and came out at the perfect time, as there were many documentaries examining the L.A. riots of 1992 released last year (the best two being L.A. 92 and Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992). Those films tried to add much needed context to the riots, and I’m tempted to say that Ergüven’s purpose was exactly the opposite – zeroing in on this confusing time for one large, Los Angeles family. I’m not sure I can say that however, because even after watching the film, I really struggle to figure out just what Ergüven’s point was. It’s tough to think of a more misjudged film than Kings.

 

The film opens with perhaps it’s best scene – in which young Latasha Harlins goes into a liquor store to buy orange juice, and ends up being shot by store owner Soon Ja Du – who is charged, and convicted of the crime – but is shockingly only given probation by the judge. We then flash forward a while, to the weeks leading up to the riots. There are TV’s on in the background of nearly every scene in Kings – showing us the progression of the trial of the officers who brutally beat Rodney King – we know when they are convicted, the riots will start.

 

But Ergüven isn’t overly interested in the trial – or the larger context playing out in L.A. at that time. Instead, her focus is on the family of Mille Dunbar (Halle Berry), a single mother raising approximately 8 children – some of hers, some are foster kids, although the movie never really spells out which is which. Millie works hard, but has no money. The one white guy in their neighborhood is Obie (Daniel Craig), a drunk writer, who lives across the alley and is prone to walking around naked, firing his shotgun out the window when things get too noisy, and occasionally snapping, and throwing things off his balcony. He will, of course, eventually become a love interest for Millie.

 

The other major plot thread involves the eldest son living with Millie – Jesse (Lamar Johnson) – and the two homeless kids he will meet. Millie runs into William (Kaalan Walker), who she knows slightly, after his mother has been sent to jail – and of course, invites him to live with them, despite his fiery temper. Jesse will meet Nicole (Rachel Hilson) at school – and later will help rescue her from some dangerous guys in a liquor store parking lot. A love triangle of sorts develops between the three teenagers – although its mostly in Jesse’ mind, as the moment Nicole sees William, it’s clear who her choice is.

 

The first half of the movie is basically their daily lives – as Millie struggles to make ends meet, Obie slowly becomes a real person – a nice guy – and Jesse tries to straighten out William, and win over Nicole. These scenes are particularly good, but they aren’t horrible. Then the riots start –and the movie flies off the rails.

 

Everything that happens after the riots start doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Jesse does something colossal stupid right off the bat – that leaves William bleeding to death, as Jesse and Nicole try to race him to the hospital, amidst all the chaos. For some reason Ergüven decides the best thing to intercut this with is Mille and Obie going on a frantic search for three of her younger sons – who head out into the riots, but mostly involves the pair of them handcuffed together to a lamp post – as they comically banter and flirt with each other as they try to free themselves.

 

The two storylines don’t mesh together – at all – and are incredibly awkward. There is a good sequence of Jesse and Nicole driving through the riots, and not being able to see much except for smoke and chaos – but the effect is lost every time they cut to Berry and Craig flirting with each other. Worse still, is nothing that any character does in the back half of the movie makes the least bit of sense – from Jesse’s stupid violence, to Millie and Obie leaving her two youngest children at home, alone, during the riots – the actions of her three other kids, which is downright awful.

 

I still think Ergüven is a talented director – anyone who made a film as good as Mustang earns a film as bad as Kings before I completely write them off. Still, it’s hard to imagine a worse film as a follow-up to a great film as this one.

Movie Review: Mustang

Mustang
Directed by: Deniz Gamze Ergüven.
Written by: Deniz Gamze Ergüven & Alice Winocour.
Starring: Günes Sensoy (Lale), Doga Zeynep Doguslu (Nur), Tugba Sunguroglu (Selma), Elit Iscan (Ece), Ilayda Akdogan (Sonay), Nihal G. Koldas (The Grandmother), Ayberk Pekcan (Erol), Bahar Kerimoglu (Dilek), Burak Yigit (Yasin).

Every review of Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang mentions Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999) – and with good reason. Both films are about five, beautiful sisters who try and rebel against their family’s strict rules – trying to control their sexual maturation, with disastrous results. The basic outline of the two films are the same, and Ergüven is clearly inspired by Coppola’s style visually as well. Yet, Mustang is far from a Virgin Suicides rip-off – it’s more of homage really, and one told from a radically different point-of-view, which shifts the entire film a little bit. Part of it is that the film takes place in a small town in Turkey – although religion isn’t mentioned (much) in the film, it is clearly a patriarchal society that stifles the girls – made even worse by the fact that their parents are dead, and so they are being raised by their grandmother, and eventually their controlling uncle, who is more concerned about his reputation than anything else. It’s different in another way as well – The Virgin Suicides, both the Jeffrey Eugenies book and Coppola’s movie, is told from the outside – from the point of view of the boys in the neighborhood, and so the girls remain enigmas, their ultimate fate a little bit of a mystery (we have some, but perhaps not enough, information). Ergüven’s film is told from the inside, deepening out emotional connection with the sisters.

The film opens in what looks like, at least to our Western eyes, a scene of relative innocence, as the sisters decide to walk home from school rather than taking the bus. Some boys join them, and they end up at the beach – playing a game in the water, where the girls sit on the boy’s shoulders and fight each other. Yet this scene of innocence, is the first one that leads to their downfall – or the moment where “Everything turned to shit” as the youngest of the sisters, Lale, says. A neighbor rats them out, and their grandmother is made that they are rubbing their privates on boys necks. Her reaction, which seems extreme, is nothing compared to how their uncle reacts when he arrives. He thinks the grandmother lets them get away with everything – and he’s determined to put an end to that. The girls are quickly withdrawn from school, given frumpy brown dresses and pretty much locked away from the outside world. They are put through “wife training”, and one at a time the uncle and grandmother conspire to marry them off – despite the fact that the oldest is only around 17, and the youngest maybe 12.

The film is about this patriarchal society that sexualizes these young girls in the name of protecting them from their sexuality. It views this sexuality as evil, so it conspires to marry them off – often to older men – to protect them from that. The film almost feels at times like a horror movie – where one-by-one, the girls get picked off - instead of murder though, it’s a wedding sequence. Once they are married off, they are barely seen in again. As the sisters start disappearing, the ones left behind become increasingly desperate. This is heightened by the fact that in the early scenes, the girls almost function as a single unit rather that individuals unto themselves – so when one disappears, the rest are somewhat lesser. The oldest daughter at least gets to marry someone she loves (although who you love at the age of 17 is rarely the person you should spend your whole life with) – the rest are not nearly as lucky.

Mustang is a rather quiet film – and one that sneaks up on you a little bit. There is quite a bit of humor in the early scenes in the movie – in the way the girls argue with the grandmother, and even the way the older women in the family cover for the girls when they sneak out to go to a soccer game. But the end though, the film has put you through an emotional wringer – the film has become a tragic, horror film – and one that doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending. This is Ergüven’s debut film as a director – and it’s one of the best debuts of the year. In many ways, it is equally as promising as The Virgin Suicides was back in 1999. The films share some similarities that is undeniable. But Ergüven takes her film in startling different directions.