King Richard Doesn't Trust Us.

Movie stars can present a very interesting conundrum. Their special ability to bring presence in a film that materializes in such a very specific, magnetic, and near magical way can not only draw people to your film on their behalf, but in the right light and casting they can elevate and bring transcendence to the work..OR they can capsize a film, disallow you from being able to suspended belief, or over emphasize the lesser aspects of your script. While I don’t think Will Smith as Richard Williams capsizes Reinaldo Marcus Green's “King Richard”, (In many ways the script is in alliance with this aspect of Will ) he is definitely the latter of these two possibilities rather than the former. There is a sense of the same artifice that has made him one of the world’s most likeable actors here on display in this Oscar bait as Richard Williams the father and coach of two of America's most brilliant, successful, and talented athletes ever. There has always been a dichotomy to Will's good-nature, it makes him loveable but keeps us at a distance, and it allows us to trust him when he clearly doesn't ’t trust us with his true vulnerability on the line. So he gives just enough to satisfy but never enough to hurt him and thusly we are rarely hurt by him on screen in that oh so good way that great actors can on screen. That lack of trust seeps it’s way into the story King Richard seems to want to tell, and though it’s hard to tell how much of it is Will and how much is the movie, its clear neither are fully on board with trusting us to hear and see the very worst right along with the very best of Richard.

Watching the film it's pretty clear what King Richard wants to say about Richard Williams. The movie wants to present a flawed man who had a resourceful and willful desire to see his daughters reach places that he himself and others he saw around him never saw. You get the sense that the film would like to present a balance of Richard's ego and harmful self aggrandizing versus the social economic inhibitors and buffers black people face just trying to be anything in an unjust world. In a nuanced way this this film would have been a film I would have loved to death, something of an ode to black fathers and a critique, and in fits and spurts you get pieces of that type of film. The beginning of the film features a sort of montage of Richard's various meetings with various white Tennis coaches that turn him down in various white ways. The scenes properly demonstrate these buffers be they economic or racial, and they play well against Richard's insightful, driven, but also overbearing personality. Later on in the film when there is an argument between Richard and his wife ( played quite wonderfully by Aunjanue Ellis ) about his stubbornness and his unilateral decision making , we really get a taste of where and when his will meets walls that make him a very tough man to live with and morbidly insensitive, but these moments also end up showing the film's scriptural weaknesses every bit as much as they show its strengths, especially as it pertains to Will Smith. Maybe the greatest moment of conflict in the movie comes a full hour and 39 minutes into the film, which is problematic in and of itself but pushing that to the side- we see Richard get into a second confrontation with his wife over yet another unilateral decision made by Richard over whether or not his daughter will attend a tournament. Now it’s important to state that the first time he does this Richard is warned by his wife that he can never again make another decision like this without first consulting her and without really listening to what it is his girls actually want or there will be consequences….and yet he does it again and script wise, there is no real consequence or push back that comes from this, simply more talking. This is in fact realistic and it happens in many marriages and close knit relationships, but this doesn't come in a way that allows or conjures examination about Brandi and her position, how trapped she might feel, or maybe even erased by a man who continues to be wilfully obtuse about his own need for martyrdom and to be the singular figure and role player in these girls lives. Will Smith's compounds this issue because he himself has built such a career off being likable he simply does not pull off in any meaningful way these traits beyond the most basic ask of the writing. I don't even think it's that hes not trying, it’s just that the idea of being able to go to that place where you yourself become ugly to the audience or nasty, mean, vile , or any of the sort is foreign to him.. he doesn't understand the concept. Don't let the words I used fool you into believing that I think that Richard needed to be vile or necessarily nasty I'm just bringing them up as varying possibilities for that I know that Will can't do. For this film I think mean spirited, rude, obnoxious, cold, thoughtless, and condescending, as it pertains to the script depiction of Richard come to mind, but only through the piecing together of exposition and context. Will himself doesn’t give himself over to very much of this. For context and comparison let's take a look at another scene which I think exemplifies even the slightest level of that want or ability to make oneself appear unlikable, I’ll use this scene from Michael Mann's “Heat”. Where DeNiro first meets Amy Brenneman…

What Deniro captures here is a steadfast myopic dedication to one's own protection, Which he is willing to embody because of his philosophical approach as an actor, and subsequently the fact that DeNiro has spent the greater part of his career playing characters that float between the dynamic of being extremely charismatic and extremely deviant and or unlikable. Will Smith too is playing a character dedicated to a steadfast and myopic protection, except for this time it is not only himself but it is also for his daughters and their career. The difference is neither the story, nor the the camera, nor Will Smith are willing to dive all the way into that space in the way that DeNiro and Mann are willing to. Will Smith has made a career of careful curation and meticulous formulation. He has trained every part of him to respond to things in a way that most effectively increases his likeabilty and thus his box office. There is a scene that takes place just before the major conflict scene between Richard and his wife, Where we see that particular argument is initiated by an original conflict between Richard and the girl's new coach Rick Macci played by Jon Bernthal. Richard announces that he is taking the girls out of practice and junior tournament competition, and Director Reinaldo Marcus Green never let’s the camera sit on Will's face for any length of time but it is especially ignored or distanced when he has something nasty or mean-spirited to say. Green shoots from the side when Will all but calls Jenifer Capriati a crackhead. When Will's Richard goes on about how it’s his plan that has guided all this to Macci asserting his dominance -Green goes over the shoulder, and when Richard becomes sarcastic and demeaning about his wife’s role in crafting their Daughters skillset , again he is slightly over Wills shoulder. Now obviously you want to capture the other perosn’s reaction, or in the case of the latter maintain the POV of the character who is speaking (Ellis), but there are ways to do this without losing the impact of what Will is doing that have alot to do with changing some poor blocking for the needs of the scene. Even still the choice is understandable as when the camera is focused on Will he is unable to deliver the proper tonality in his face needed for the emotion within the context of these scenes. When his wife brings up Richard's past its one very clear example of a certain hollowness in Will's skillset, and in he and the movies will to trust us. In any space or context dredging up this past would be something that would probably set someone off. Not necessarily in any way that demonstrates or alludes to violence but just something that would deeply knock them off balance, but Will is always on balance and there is none of what should be registering on his face there even though his words and the things he retorts back to his wife are clearly indicative of the kind of underlying hurt and anger that should appear on Wills face. What this does is take away the full power, impact, and resonance of this particular scene unless you are paying sole attention to the words. So that a scene that should have the impact of Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in Fences where a husband and a wife are clearly confronting past sins and hurt that they have not been communicative to each other about - Instead feels more like a it's a simple disagreement about the direction in which to drive. ..

Extra marital affairs in the case of “Fences” and abandoned children in the case of “King Richard” are not light work, or subjects, these are the kinds of discussions and retorts that would most certainly inspire great disappointment, anger, frustration, hurt and more. Those emotions then as a consequence would inspire and create power through impact - that is what we saw out of the seminal and now classic Denzel/Viola scene in “Fences”. I don't know that anyone believes that fences is one of the greatest films of this era or even that there are that many people who love it in its entirety, but people KNOW that scene and its impact has carried well beyond maybe even the popularity of that film. Where was that scene here? All the trials, from within and without the family, and yet no scene really carries, and with so much time spent with the camera on Will, that’s an indictment. Will is a talented actor who like Tom Cruise has a sitting veneer that when explored could produce fascinating results, ( See Interview, Collateral, Born on the Fourth, Magnolia, Eyes Wide and the beginning of Edge of Tomorrow ) but while Cruise has explored this quite a few times in his filmography, Will hasn’t really explored it since “Six Degreees of Separation” and it shows here because all this belies what is most important to the storytellers involved, especially it's actor. Will Smith as a celebrity now spends abundant amount of times acting like a social media influencer. He scurries about in circles telling the same stories through different funnels about moving beyond obstacles and dismissing real impediments as trifles that can be resolved by nothing more than willpower and fairy dust. This is a movie in service of that kind of story that wants to continually and always be moving towards aspiration and inspiration, and away from anything that may temporarily stop the velocity and progression of that feeling. Even when the direction and script and Will himself desire to push for something greater its as if his own face betrays him, when he says “What you want a thank you” his face doesn’t give the power necessary to push that sentiment that sense of betrayal and anger into the realm of something as mean and discouraging as it needs to be.. Hes still half smiling and it’s not that devilishly slimy smile folks like Denzel and Willem Dafoe have mastered its just a weird stalemate between what he wants to do and what he's trained himself all too well to do over the years…

It doesn't do much for story that wants to be much more nuanced about the egotism and audacity of a black man who wants the best both for himself and his daughters and the hardships of doing that in an extremely white world or space. King Richard, like so many movies today, does not trust us the audience with the ability to handle impactful and crushing turns in the story, it doesn't trust us to be able to handle impactful and crushing turns in a character whom we like. So that unlike 1995's “Jerry Maguire” where we see even a positive decision like Jerry deciding to back Rod Tidwell and take him around a convention in order to boost his contract, - King Richard won't let us see its version of that turn and smack to Jerry in the face from a racist father who viewed that as a shunning. In the case of Will Smith as Richard it won't allow us to see as 1994's “Jason's lyric” did Bokeem Woodbine - the idea that he or even Forrest Whitaker's “Mad Dog” could be both very sweet men and very terrifying men at the same time. This lacking hobbles and impedes any true resonance, and in respect to Richard's personality in story- it fails as we actually never see a consequence to his egotism to his stubbornness or someplace where we would see he wasn't right to make this decision. Script wise almost every single decision he seems to make in this movie goes in his favor so how are we to ever really impactfully see what and how his stubbornness hurts those around him when even they don't really provide any consequence to his behavior. This lack of trust breaks a bond between audience and art. It’s art that ensconces itself from our disappointment in a way that keeps it safe by disallowing us to tie ourselves to that more closely in a way that might allow us to become angered or incensed at the work, especially that part of the audience that is actually apart of its story in the Williams family. Sure we end up liking, maybe even loving it on some superficial level, but ultimately it leaves us at a distance, that same distance that has always been kept between us and its star Will Smith. It doesn't invite us in for any real discovery about Richard Williams or about Will Smith and that is still sad in this time because we don't need biopics that provide such sterile and curated depictions of our heroes in order to protect them or find their power anymore than Richard needed to provide such a sterile, heavily curated environment for his kids to protect them or find their power. What we are left with is a movie that mines nothing except visual confirmation of things we already know, brings no deep emotional discovery or excavation and like its star ends as extremely likable, but mot much else, and also like its star I wager even that will change with time.