Heavy is the Timothée that wears the crown in new trailer for Netflix's The King

By Randall Colburn | October 24, 2019 | 2:26pm

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Heavy is the Timothée that wears the crown in new trailer for Netflix's The King

Screenshot: Netflix

In a time when every old film, comic, and theme park ride is getting mined for content, there’s something refreshing about wunderkind actors like Timothée Chalamet and Robert Pattinson throwing their weight behind a loose, thoughtful (but not official) riff on William Shakespeare’s Henry IV and V. In Netflix’s The King, director David Michôd (The Rover, War Machine) again linked up with past collaborator Joel Edgerton for a re-telling of the hard-partying Prince Hal’s ascent to the English throne.

Per the trailer, Edgerton’s co-starring role as Shakespeare’s notorious Falstaff appears to be a more somber one than you might see onstage, while Pattinson’s Dauphin is positively dripping with malice. Unfortunately, our own Jesse Hassenger was less than impressed with the “turgidly familiar film,” writing in his review, “Chalamet and the movie are both too respectable to relish the pulpiness, and both lack the psychological acuity necessary for all of this to work on more serious terms.”