Watch Kings For Free

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Touches You

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

So I was expecting more than I got. Workman like but not the best of Irish cinema.I would agree that the best performance was by 'Git' by a long chalk. In the roles Jap and Joe I wonder how it would have played with actors swapped.I had not been aware it was an adapted play but it was painfully obvious as the film crept on.I was most unimpressed with the camera jittery work in the back bar room scene. I can't believe the director etc. don't suffer in extremis each time they see it. That is not is say the rest of the camera work was bad it was fine.Surely only the Irish could have such nice clean alcoholics. Jap gingerly sprawling in an alleyway whilst remarkably sober was most gentil. Such a clean well shaven drunk, it is a wonder the polis didn't ask if they would like their chauffeur alerted, to take them home. Did they really take umpteen hours to drink a 2 litre bottle of cider and they stayed drunk? We must be told the name of this potent brew! As for the conga line of "get your shirts off lads and let's bond" and let's sing a good old rebel song (for of course all oirish are rebels even after 30 yrs in England-shure they're only lads at heart). As they dance through the pub and out into the street with not a comment from anyone in the pub, well it is all so believable. Then the dapper Jap puts his shirt on again now he has bonded.Of course the Oirish screen writers gave it an award.The film had it's moments of poignancy and truth but they were sacrificed to the altar/stage of Irish caricatures. Not too far really from the semtex toting/Irish (extracted?) dancing thug of 'Shameless' played by Sean Gilder. But with Shameless we know where the writer is coming from and we are both entertained and educated by the revelations of human life. King's does not have the often delicate touch of life seen in shameless.The director struggled with the script and its adaptation for screen. He lost the intimacy that drink brings and the very dark humour we Irish have in abundance. Standing around in an empty room was not good cinema.Was it awful, No. Would I watch it again, never.

This contains the best acting I have seen in an Irish film in many years. It is a reworking of a play, and the adaptation preserves all the intensity and intimacy which is usual within a theatre production. It is a dark, brooding and menacing work which does not belong in the category of light entertainment, but rather, a higher art. If you are prepared to go on the journey, you will find it has rewards. But be warned that there is no compromise here to easy access for English only speakers - it is predominantly in Irish with English subtitles. If you like the theatre, you should find this a real treat. Forget Hollywood, or indeed Fair City, this contains the best ensemble acting by an Irish cast since the best of the Roddy Doyle films.

Kings plunges its viewers into the harsh reality of five Irish immigrant's lives in London. The men are separated not only geographically, but psychologically, from their homeland. They yearn to return, but are consumed with a sense of their own failure and fear rejection from loved ones at home. Instead they immerse themselves in alcohol and unfulfilled dreams. The acting is superb; the characters true-to-life; the theme universal. The use of Gaelic is a dramatic tool that serves to emphasize their alienation again in their adopted town of Kilburn. It is a story of sadness and regret and how individuals deal with pain. Tom Collins's movie challenges the audience to question their own relationships with fellow human beings, especially those from whom they are estranged, and especially those who were forced to leave these shores. It challenges us to question our views on this lost generation and to look at an era in our history that allowed such mass immigration. Hopefully, Kings will open up a national debate on how a Government could have failed its subjects and allowed a land to be bled of its inhabitants; hopefully,it will inspire us to welcome them home with open arms; hopefully it will encourage the present Government to continue to provide the means to do so. Go and see Kings. You will not be disappointed.

A beautifully-made film, "Kings" is one of the best movies of this year. The hand-held camera gives it an intimacy too often absent in close-up cinematic portraiture, and allows the viewer a real look at the shocking sadness of the lives of its subjects. Of a group of five friends who leave the west of Ireland in their teens in the late 1970s, Jackie is the first to die. Herein begins a long journey into oblivion for his four friends, all of them living lives very different from what was envisaged at the start of their English odyssey. What "Kings" does, more than anything, is take a long look at the generations of lost Irish in London, those who left Ireland on the boat to work on the building sites and to clean houses, and the sad waste of the loss of potential to the devils of booze. The films stays away from nostaglia or sentiment, and in doing so it creates for the viewer a real picture of how it was for all the thousands of immigrants, most of whom never saw home again.