Critic Reviews

The sprawl of it, the seeming disorganization, all work to its advantage and betray Kings' ambition. Ergüven wasn’t going for documentary, she was aiming for an impressionistic “feel” — terror, outrage, helplessness, a city and a system that aren’t built for you, even when you’re hurt, even when you’re in trouble.

In its highly combustable, confusing, angry environment, where everyone from parents to rioters to cops is just making it up as they go along, the only thing that seems to matter are the underlying drives, whether it’s goodheartedness or resentment.

For all its honorable intentions to address sensitive issues that still sting, Kings is an unconvincing tonal patchwork.

Kings is a tangle of conflicting moods and emotions.

The first English-language film from the Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven (her 2015 movie “Mustang” was a foreign language Oscar nominee) is well-acted across the board, and contains more than a few outstanding, unpredictable scenes. But in tying its story to this particular moment in American history, the movie bites off more than it can coherently chew.

The English-language debut from the brilliant talent behind best foreign film picture nominee “Mustang” is a terribly uneven, borderline absurdist jumble that undercuts its own message again and again.

The missteps seem to never end as the director and actors struggle to bring some kind of coherence to this unwieldy film. Although it tries to be political and relevant to our times, Kings becomes such a confusing blur that one wonders where precisely in the process it all went wrong.

Eschewing poeticism for an empty sense of prefab empathy, Kings is so determined to be hopeful that it forgets to be honest.

There are sparks of interest and some powerful moments, but it is structurally disjointed, tonally uncertain, unfocused and unfinished, with some very broad drama-improv-class acting from the kids and a frankly unrelaxed and undirected performance from Halle Berry.

Kings is a confusing and far-fetched story in which good intentions outweigh good storytelling.