with "The King", David Michod, has made a fine big-screen entertainment that most people will probably watch at home, on a Netflix-sized rectangle; Their retelling honors a classic story and opens its grandeur to a new audience
Robert Pattinson is preposterously fabulously pert and camp, a hoot every moment he's on screen. What's most surprising though in this thoroughly enjoyable film is the improvement in the character of Falstaff, played by Joel Edgerton
it's a feat that speaks to the deftness and intelligence of the approach that Michod and Edgerton take with their writing and direction, giving us an epic period piece that actually fulfills much of that ambition
director David Michod has done something genuinely fresh and confident with this well-told piece of English folklore; This version of the story is stirring, but it unpicks the idea of English exceptionalism with real smarts too
David Michod's "The King" is so eager to be a mud-and-guts epic about inherited violence and the corruption of power that it loses sight of the rich coming-of-age story at its core
a stirringly lucid drama that balances its muscular and contemplative sides with unerring judgment, harnessing quietly commanding performances to reflect on the vainglorious folly of power and "the doleful weight of war".