The King
Netflix | Release Date: October 11, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
62
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
18
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 10, 2019
The King has enough in its coffers to keep you moderately engaged. Read full review
60
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 9, 2019
With the Bard’s words, Henry roused his soldiers to action: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” With this mediocrity, it’s more a case of how the war was wan. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleSep 3, 2019
The King feels disconnected and unurgent. Despite some wonderful moments, it perhaps lacks the requisite majesty. Read full review
60
The GuardianXan BrooksSep 3, 2019
One watches Chalamet’s performance here with a simmering unease, willing him on but wondering if he is entirely fit for the task. Read full review
60
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 3, 2019
Without the Shakespearean language, this is just an ahistorical story about a king and a battle. ... But it’s nothing fancy, really, nothing newfangled or inventive. This is a pretty straight-down-the-middle period war-king film, a true Boy Movie of respectable pedigree but no real distinction. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineChristopher GrayNov 5, 2019
If only the film made more of the curious tension between Timothée Chalamet’s Henry and Robert Pattinson’s dauphin. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 2, 2019
The King is something of a tin-eared bore and a massive waste of time. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayOct 23, 2019
In this case, director David Michôd — working from a script he co-wrote with actor Joel Edgerton — doesn’t make the material distinctive or provocative enough to merit a second, far more dramatically inert go-round. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzOct 15, 2019
The movie – a messy and frequently bloody blend of Shakespeare’s Henriad plays, but devoid of their language, scope and, well, drama – is forgettable. Read full review
50
VoxConstance GradyOct 10, 2019
Mostly, The King is about the corrupting influences of power, and the idea that war, perhaps especially Renaissance war, is an inhuman, brutal experience. And it is damned if it’s going to let you get off your couch with any ideas to the contrary. No, The King will thump its themes into your head, whatever it goddamned takes. Read full review
50
The Associated PressJake CoyleOct 10, 2019
It’s a movie best seen less as a historical epic and more as a metaphor for a rising young movie star coming up in a culture he aims to subvert. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 10, 2019
What Michôd never manages to make clear is what we are to make of this version’s nationalism, its glorification of war, its ambivalence toward corrupting power and its selective, finally misguided attempt to brush off Shakespeare. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerOct 7, 2019
It’s hard to feel energized by a historical epic finding a couple of ways to look cool for a few minutes at a time. Most of The King is just unadorned semi-prestige, with a few gruesome severed heads rolling around for cred. Read full review
50
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 3, 2019
The King is so eager to be a mud-and-guts epic about inherited violence and the corruption of power that it loses sight of the rich coming-of-age story at its core. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 11, 2019
Chalamet gives it his all as the pudding-bowl-hairstyled young king. But so much of the poetry and the sense of loss has gone from this decaffeinated version of the story. Read full review
40
SlateIsaac ButlerOct 2, 2019
This Hal can only mumble resentfully in one language. It’s the language of “serious” male cinema in the year 2019, where seething resentment gives forth to bursts of violence. In deciding to speak this language instead of Shakespeare’s, Michôd has taken two of the Bard’s immortal geniuses, the drunkard Falstaff and his protégé, the Prince, and shrunk them down to the size of everyday people. Read full review
40
Screen DailyJonathan RomneySep 3, 2019
Michôd’s film is a determinedly solemn and violent affair, which makes a sober political point at the end – but not before it has treated us to two hours of bleakly realistic historical reconstruction and some lugubrious drama. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 3, 2019
Historical epics are rarely light on their feet, but The King sets new standards in the field of galumphing: the film moves like a rhinoceros through porridge. Read full review
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