Beautiful accent of the main actor,. And so beautiful Natalie Martinez. The rest... interesting

i wish i could show this film to all the haters who downvoted my review of Aftermath.Message From The King is a very personal take on the revenge film genre, kind of similar to Taken, but less Hollywood. The message, to be clear, is pain.Chadwick Boseman plays King, a black man from South Africa who shows up in the US to visit his sister, who is apparently living there.You can immediately understand that while the two siblings were close, they must have had some family issues that have now prevented from keeping close still. This is done without words, just by Acting(tm).King finds his sister's roommate, and we immediately understand that something bad has happened, she must have fallen in with the wrong crowd.King, who seems to be a young man of little means, proves himself to be a spectacular investigator and soon finds out what has happened and who needs some punishment. And he does bring on the bad people a great good deal of punishment, but not in a Hollywood "fire and brimstone" kind of way, but rather closer to the way you had that fight in highschool and nothing went as planned but in the end you won and the other guy lost.THIS is how you do grief. THIS is how you do real in a film. Boseman puts in some real effort and the result is tangible, helped by the fantastic direction and camera-work that frame the emotions rather than the script. Message From the King is a bit limited in scope, true. Guy goes on revenge. OK, but what is remarkable is that it uses good filmmaking and acting techniques to advance the story, instead of "good guy dodges bullets, bad guy's car explodes", which is, in my opinion, the reason why the rating is so low.Watch this film. If you don't like it, you'll know exactly what type of movie-goer you are.My vote: a solid 7.5/10 and hopefully we'll see more of Boseman.

*There is no way I can comment on this film without SPOILERS so read at own risk*I had really high hopes for this film based on the trailers. Possibly too high. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I had none.Unlikely.This movie left me with a lot of questions, but before we get to that I want to say some of the things I enjoyed.A story with black characters not based on traditional stereotypes! That I know of anyway. I'm not South African. The siblings tattoo idea. I like the symbolism (intended or not) of how each sibling ends up seeing, hearing, or speaking evil. Great cast overall. Would not change the chemistry. The use of a bike chain as a weapon. The good guy didn't really win, and probably made certain characters lives worse. I'm a bit torn though as well because we're still seeing more whites 'win' than black in movies...so as much as I like the end, it was bittersweet.Armand. For some reason he turned into my favorite character even though he had no lines.That being said...The story did not seem to know how it wanted to tell itself. There were several . I don't know if this was writer or director error, or if it was intentional, but the lack of certain realism pulled me from the movie and kept me from my usual suspension of reality.First: The border security...like what? He got let into the country after not answering any questions? He got moved to an interrogation room and wasn't finger printed? They would have known he was a detective. I don't understand his need to lie about this. There is no motive. Did he pay someone off to fake his identity? "I am here to visit my sister. I will be staying with her and using the money for food and bus fare. In a week, I will return home." or even "I wanted to see if busking in your country would garner the same results as your young Americans do in my country." would have made more sense.Second: Hinting a little at why he calls himself The King would have been nice. It was a great line and wish it had been explored more.Third: How did he not get arrested when he beat up Frankie? The sirens were close. The drugs were mostly used up. I'm sure since it was outside no one else would have been an issue even if they were high because of lack of possession.Third p2: How on Earth were the cops who arrested him worth 50 grand? They were so bad at their side job. Cops not on the books are violent against blacks in the States. And why the political connection in the story at all? The governor didn't seem to have anything to do with the recording and the dentist was rich enough.Fourth: If you suspect your business partner in crime is stealing from you...WHY ARE YOU NOT INVESTIGATING? Would it not make more sense to have him followed? And have someone do an independent audit? If he's done it before WHY ARE YOU STILL PARTNERS? And what rings other than drugs were they even in? It seemed like there was only one child molesting (+worse) incident and the rest were prostitutes. Were they trying to break into the underage ring? I don't get it.Fifth: What was it about the video and Armand that condemned King's sister to death? Why was she tortured instead of just executed? How was she a threat? To whom was she a threat? They hired professionals for this, why? I felt like sentences were being cut out of a book and pasted together with good inventions. It was not a bad movie by far, but it had a lot missing for me to say I loved it. The potential was there...it just didn't quite make it for me.

When it comes to films with black leads, I try to never let representation cloud my judgement and always hope they have the ideal writing and direction working for the leads in their favor. I've been excited to see Chadwick Boseman raise from the TV show Lincoln Heights to playing T'Challa as Black Panther. After learning about this film Message from the King, I thought this film would at least be a good prelude to the few months waiting for Black Panther, however, I left severely underwhelmed that the Message brings.Chadwick Boseman plays Jacob King, a man traveling back from South Africa to search for his sister Bianca had gone missing and goes on a chase through those she knew personally for answers of her whereabouts and even resulting in violent acts in the process. Chadwick himself does fine in the role, as most of the time he is spent stoic and a man of few words. Luke Evans makes a surprise role connected to the antagonists, and while his cool persona helps the role, his character gets really annoying fast as a dentist where literally no character doesn't talk about their teeth while their around him. "You can really learn about a man when you see his teeth." That is a real line. In a movie that's supposed to be a action thriller.Another big issue is the pacing of this movie. Even at a 103 minute runtime, it takes entirely too long for any engaging action to occur (there's only 2 action scenes in the whole movie), and the plot and writing isn't engaging enough to warrant it's slow burn storytelling. But the film really flies off the rails in the third act with the main antagonist and you find out about his shady business involving someone young, it felt disgusting and really out of place for what the films main motivation.Message from the King was one I had hope for, but I found out halfway, this wouldn't leave a good impact. The direction and writing is choppy, despite some decent performances from Chadwick and Luke. I just feel King deserved better and I'm hoping I'm right in February.