The White King

This is a low budget, low-action, dystopian recycled story, apparently filmed in or near Hungary, with good british acting. I don't recommend it, even to dystopia fans. It's STAND BY ME meets 1984 / HANDMAID'S TALE et al. There's little there, there.

Really, it's a bit an empty movie. Some great shots, clearly the crew is capable, but the movie as it's edited just doesn't go anywhere. 90 minutes of wasted time. It carries the potential to so much more but never really delivers. If you watch it, do it for the esthetics. For the movie in its entirety it is not particularly worth the time.

Potential. But I think it failed to convert from the book into a film. The backdrop with violent kids just rampaging, and no one paying attention to that, to the ending that offered nothing. I have no idea what the film was wanting to achieve. I think they wanted to make this a triple series but maybe realised it was just weak material and gave up. either that or the editor is owed his or her $500 fee and withheld the last 20 minutes of the film. Watch it or not it is one of those that won't make a difference. Sad really, had a lot of potential in there. I think you could have gone to 20 random people in the street and they could have made that 50% better

Four stars overall, but seven stars for the idea. Four stars because dialogue was hard to follow with no subtitles; poor enunciation; really poor audio level control, and that's coming from a person w/normal hearing. Seven stars for a dystopian future storyline similar to what China, Russia, North Korea, Turkey, Syria offer the world now (and the US kind of heading that way recently). A trickle down economy in which the wealthy and/or powered privileged keep the masses in line w/slogans w/nationalist religious fervor, and the scraps to keep them sustainable day-to-day. Personal expression of your dreams, etc. are reason for sanction or imprisonment. Appropriately, filmed out of Hungary.

Ten Stars. My wife's parents grew up in one of the socialist paradises, Bulgaria, and they recommend this film as the most incisive depiction of what goes on when the people hand over more and more control of the economy, and with it, education and with that, people's lives, to a government. I do want to comment on one reviewer here who said a scene was copied from George Orwell. Please read Christoper Hitchens' "Why Orwell Matters." Orwell included an actual brainwashing exercise in Lenin's socialist USSR. The white King is not copying Orwell, but rather including in the story a common enough abuse in socialist countries. See this film, and understand why the largest purveyors of violence have always been governments, and especially those claiming to be looking after the social welfare.