What do you get when you cross The Hunger Games with a touch of Orwellian themed 1984-esque utopia? Well, if you were to add poor acting, a very limited budget (especially for a movie that's classified as sci-fi), and a complete absence of tension or drama, apparently your result would be The White King. Based on György Dragomán's 2005 novel of the same name, the movie focuses on a young boy, Djata (Lorenzo Allchurch), growing up fatherless in dystopian region referred to simply as Homeland, and his tribulations of growing up in such an autocratic place. As the youngster deals with his psychotic grandparents (Jonathan Pryce and Fiona Shaw) who pressure him into shooting an innocent cat, a mentally fragile mother who's been ostracized from society due to her husband's traitorous stigma, and overgrown twin bullies who steal his soccer ball, his struggles are mirrored only by the audience who has to sit through this amateurishly designed and poorly realized movie.
Having never read the novel that it's based on, I can only comment on the cinematic material, and alas, it is just... bad. I've witnessed better acting - and writing - on an average daytime soap opera. Co-directors Alex Helfrecht and Jörg Tittel never find the right tone or a narrative worth following (scene in a forest featuring a scarred Grizzly Adams type man goes absolutely nowhere), and their effort pretty much results in a student film stretched out to feature length. Pryce is the only actor who displays any acting talent whatsoever; even the newcomer Allchurch spews his lines as if he was a robot desperately attempting to convey a human emotion. The final scene is a total failure of unfulfilled melodrama, its intended emotional impact turning into an unintentionally laughable climax. The White King is that rare cinematic feat, celluloid excrement masquerading as profound art.
D-
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