Review: Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Reviews

The King

Near-horror film about Elvis's lost years

By NINA MACLAUGHLIN | June 14, 2006

3.0 Stars

BIBLICALLY BAD: The King is intense

British director James Marsh crams a whole lot of myths and allusions into The King -- Oedipus, Hamlet, the Prodigal Son -- and a whole lot of transgressions -- incest, arson, prostitution. And when things go bad, they go Biblically bad. Y tu mamá también co-star Gael García Bernal plays Elvis Valderez, who leaves the Navy and heads to Corpus Christi to find the father who abandoned him. Successful, self-important pastor David Sandow (William Hurt) spurns his son again, wanting to put his godless past behind him. Elvis, calm and good-natured on the surface, makes his way into his dad’s idyllic life and begins to enact supreme revenge. Pell James and Paul Dano are standouts as the pastor’s innocent-experienced teenage kids, and Marsh does a good job of exploring God and sin and forgiveness. But it’s Bernal’s quiet intensity that propels The King and elevates its horror to mythic proportions.

Related: Georgia Rule, D-Back rampage, Comma self, More

Georgia Rule
Abusive sex with a minor is no trite matter, yet in Georgia Rule it’s bandied about like a tennis ball on a summer day.
D-Back rampage
The great 2006 defensive-back crime rampage continues.
Comma self
The “comma self” murder has for decades been one of the most important innovations in American-headline literature, a testament to both our national fascination with verbal brevity and to our sociopathic, codependent relationship to deadly violence: FLA. MAN KILLS WIFE, DOG, MOTHER, ACCOUNTANT, SELF.
Escaping the life
Like the drug dealers in The Wire or accounts of illegal trafficking of any form, the current and former teenage prostitutes in David Schisgall's documentary Very Young Girls don't often refer to their trade as a job.
Ending violence
V-Day is once more upon us, and for those not partial to Hallmark-driven capitalism, the V now also popularly stands for "Vagina" or "Victory," thanks to Eve Ensler's famous monologues about violence against women.
True grit
Operation Bobbi Bear is a non-governmental organization in Durban, South Africa, devoted to finding care and foster homes for children who are abused and abandoned.
Doing the right thing
There are plenty of stories that harken back to a Golden Age, but Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird was different.
Personal fouls
The biggest story in sports media last week was the discovery of surreptitiously shot nude-video footage of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, whose comeliness has made her a favorite — and sometimes a fetish — of the online sports commentariat.
Bishop’s puzzlement on pro-choice Catholics is misplaced
Dogma doesn’t pay the rent, feed a hungry child, or pay for medicine; nor do arrogance, hypocrisy, or feigned bewilderment.
Southern discomfort
A pair of recent developments in the Sun Belt serves as a useful reminder that antagonism between government and the press can get a whole lot nastier.
Healey's hypocrisy
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court established a long time ago that while those accused of a crime in this state are not entitled to a perfect trial, they should receive at least a fair trial.
Less

Topics: Reviews , Elvis Presley, Crime, Sexual Offenses, More

| More

More Information

Watch the trailer for The King (QuickTime)

ARTICLES BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

ON CARPENTRY AND COLLEGE | October 20, 2011
Age 30, I quit the Phoenix and ended up with a job as an apprentice to a carpenter. Sawing, chiseling, hammering, nail-gunning, tiling, sanding, slotting, framing, hauling, measuring, and sweeping are less obvious outcomes of an undergraduate career in the liberal arts. College, in strange and unexpected ways, prepared me for this sort of work. And in others, did not prepare me at all.

PHDISASTERS | April 27, 2011
I knew a man pursuing a PhD in literature. His dissertation had to do with humor as a form of dissent in 20th-century literature. And how enthused he was at first! How passionate and excited.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE'S THE PALE KING | April 13, 2011
All I can do is tell you how I read the book.

THE HOUSE THAT HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG BUILT | February 25, 2011
Andre Dubus III collected me at the Newburyport train station last month when the snow piles were already high. We stopped first for a coffee for the road; he asked all the questions: siblings, hometown, are you married?

DON'T BE AN IDIOT | January 27, 2011
We're all idiots when we're 18. We're all idiots for the first half of our 20s, and longer, for some. By saying so, we're not trying to insult anyone.