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Night of the Kings Movie Review

Night of the Kings is a 2020 Ivorian prison drama film directed by Philippe Lacote. It’s a film that is overly ambitious for its own sake, but it’s undeniably impressive in some of its elements.

A new arrival to an Ivory Coast prison is unaware that his storytelling skills will determine his life or death. This is a very African movie in tone and mysticism, which will prove challenging for Western audiences, but to me it was fascinating seeing a different culture explored so potently on the big screen. The movie is definitely intriguing, at least in the first half.

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The homoerotic elements with the crossdresser in the first act are very memorable and so is the look into the prison hierarchy that is different than your regular prisons. This film was much better than many other prison dramas, a genre that I usually strongly dislike, but here at least I was intrigued more often than not. The character interactions are quite fascinating.

The second half changed everything with the introduction of storytelling into the procedure. The idea was fine, but the execution wasn’t my cup of tea. They did try to break away from the stagy feel of the movie, but they failed because the visuals outside of the prison aren’t all that memorable nor is the story of the protagonist all that interesting.

I would have preferred an emphasis on many other characters instead of just the protagonist having in mind that many personalities here are quite intriguing, especially Blackbeard. But the movie opted to focus only on “Roman” in the second half, which rendered the film somewhat stale and repetitive at this point.

Night of the Kings did feel immediate and mystical at first with the cinematography being particularly strong and the editing quite effective, but again the second half became weaker in both its technicalities and in terms of storytelling. For a movie that is only one hour and a half long, they bit more than they could chew, which resulted in a rushed experiment that is daring, but far from accomplished.

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Night of the Kings is quite memorable, effective and intriguing in its strong first half where the character dynamics and hierarchy were fascinating. The second half introduced flashbacks into the procedure and it was much less interesting to watch. The movie was overly ambitious for such a short runtime, resulting in a daring, but flawed product.

My Rating – 3.5