Review of MESSAGE FROM THE KING: Search for Sister

September 20, 2017

This film had a trailer which practically told you the gist of its story about a man searching for his missing sister. I immediately felt the intensity and intimacy of the film from that simple but compelling trailer. I wanted to know what happened to the sister and how he will find her, or maybe not. The story may be common, but the moody treatment by its Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz looked different and interesting.

From South Africa, Jacob King arrived in LAX planning to stay in Los Angeles for only a week with only $600 in cash and no credit cards. He wanted to look for his younger sister Bianca who sent him a cryptic distress call. From the get go, he discovered that Bianca fallen with the wrong people, mostly drug dealers and sex fiends. He knew then his search may not lead to anything good.

The story was told in a most straightforward manner. The events of Jacob's search were in linear order, with a few flashbacks of Jacob and Bianca's childhood playing in their home country to establish their closeness as siblings. As the search story unfolded though, it was not as simple as I initially thought it would be. 

There were three major bad guys that Bianca got herself involved with. These were the gangster Zico (Lucan Melkonian), the dentist Dr. Paul Wentworth (Luke Evans) and the filmmaker Mike Preston (Alfred Molina). There were also some druggies, like Bianca's slutty roommate Trish (Natalie Martinez) and their slimy dealer Frankie (Tom Felton). I thought the connections among these people were very well-written and plotted. 

At the end though, I I thought the all-important reason behind Bianca's fate in the film was not too clearly explained. There was an SD card among the clues Jacob found among Bianca's things, and we do see the video file in it was all about. However, I could not tell how the contents of that video could have led to what happened to Bianca. The director decided to let us imagine how it happened, instead of showing it to us. 

Chadwick Boseman was very good both in the intense physical and emotional aspects of Jacob King. We already saw him hit the box office big time as King T'challa of Wakanda, the Black Panther, in "Captain America: Civil War" (2016). Before that in 2014, Boseman played real life personalities like Jackie Robinson in "42" and James Brown in "Get On Up". He is also playing Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Justice of the US Supreme Court, in the upcoming film "Marshall". Things are indeed looking up for this actor's career.

Luke Evans plays it very smooth as Wentworth, even if he had to mouth some pretty silly dentist lines about teeth and personality. Alfred Molina can really milk everything out of even the shallowest characters like Preston, maximizing his every emotional moment to come up with a memorable three-dimensional portrayal. 

Teresa Palmer was deglamorized here to play Kelly, Jacob's next door neighbor who helped him out. Zimbabwean actress Sibongile Mlambo did not have a single line of dialogue as Bianca King, but her exotic vibe beauty made her stand out.

I liked the way the character of Jacob King was developed in the story. Right up to the very last scene, we learn something new about him. The way he used a bicycle chain as a deadly weapon was an original touch. While this was still a B-action revenge film at heart, but it done with artistic vision and flair. 6/10.