Message From the King Netflix Original Movie Review
Major Spoilers are included in this movie review. Please read with caution.
On August 29, 2020, I watched Message From the King—starring the late Chadwick Boseman—to immerse myself in his brilliant work. Released as a Netflix Original on August 4, 2017, the movie follows Jacob King (Chadwick Boseman) traveling from Cape Town, South Africa to Los Angeles to find his missing sister Blanca (Sibongile Mlambo). Once he discovers what happened to her, King embarks on a vengeance mission to get justice.
While the film has amazing cinematography and action scenes, the writing was somewhat lackluster. The story moved in a logical manner—I could follow along just fine—but it failed to keep my attention sometimes. Whenever King interacted with the other side-characters like his sister’s next-door neighbor Trish (Natalie Martinez) and sex worker Kelly (Teresa Palmer), they sometimes didn’t add much to the overall narrative or were distractions from the events taking place.
The film itself wasn’t an original idea—the premise is about a man wanting revenge for the death of a loved one—but Jacob King’s urgent quest for vengeance made me overlook a lot of the clichés presented like the pretty girl sex worker with a cute kid. It was difficult to overlook how all the bad guys had guns and King only needed a chain whip to defeat them, but whatever the fight scenes were still really cool to watch.
Basically, Chadwick Boseman carried the movie—a force to be reckon with it. He plays Jacob Black with such a laidback and enigmatic personality—similar to how he portrays T’Challa from Black Panther—that it’s easily noticeable when the flow of the story breaks regarding his interactions with the other side-characters like I mentioned earlier in this review.
Overall, Message From the King was a decent 1hr and 48min movie. I had a good time watching Chadwick Boseman kick ass on screen, but the other characters, plot and script could’ve used a few more revisions—or more effort—in making the revenge action thriller genre material more original. Rest in power, Chadwick Boseman. You did some amazing work. Thank you so much. And thank you, everyone else, for reading this movie review. Let’s keep it moving.