This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Dan and Cris review Message from the King, the 2016 revenge-action thriller directed by Fabrice Du Welz and starring Chadwick Boseman as Jacob King, a South African man who lands in Los Angeles with very little money, a very flimsy explanation for immigration, and one mission: find out what happened to his missing sister Bianca.
What begins as a missing-person search quickly turns into a grimy revenge story involving a horrible motel, a bag of clues, a trip to the morgue, Mediterranean gangsters, a bike chain wrapped around a fist, Tom Felton as a posh drug dealer, Luke Evans as a suspicious dentist, and Alfred Molina as a powerful Hollywood figure with a very dark secret. The dads follow Jacob as he works his way through the people who exploited Bianca, uncovering blackmail, abuse, a flash drive, a politician and a trafficked child caught in the middle of it all.
The big praise goes to Chadwick Boseman, who carries the film with quiet menace, grief and controlled violence. The lads agree that the plot is fairly generic and asks for a few leaps, especially at the airport, but it is short, nasty, gritty and satisfying enough to work. There is also plenty of appreciation for the film’s finest piece of cycling-related violence: the bike chain.
The verdict is a medium-strong recommend. Message from the King is not reinventing the revenge thriller, but it is lean, brutal and watchable, with Boseman giving the whole thing far more weight than it might otherwise have had.
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