The King Maker Review

The King Maker takes place in the Ayutthaya Kingdom in Siam (now Thailand) in the sixteenth century and follows the adventures of Fernando (the excellently named Gary Stretch) , a Portuguese mercenary, who, after being shipwrecked, is captured by Arab slavers. After an attempt to escape, his freedom is bought by the beautiful Maria (Cindy Burbridge), a Portuguese living in Siam with her father, Philippe (John Rhys-Davies ofIndiana Jones and Lord of the Rings fame), who is working in service to the king (Nirut Sirichanya). Fernando too finds himself fighting for the king and after proving himself to be a strong warrior, enlisted in the king’s personal guard. Soon, it becomes apparent that the king’s life is in danger; unbeknownst to Fernando, it is the queen (Yossavadee Hassadeevitchitt) behind the assassination attempts, as she is trying to install her lover as monarch.

Despite being good-natured and generally inoffensive,The King Maker really isn’t anything to write home about. The most obvious problem is in its wildly differing production values. Though CGI is utilised sparingly, the graphics conjured are beyond shoddy. Furthermore, if you’re going to have a crocodile attempt to eat your protagonist in a scene lasting fewer than five seconds and all you can afford is an all-too obviously rubber reptile, perhaps you should be asking whether you really need to include the scene at all. The low-budget special effects are particularly befuddling given the impressiveness of the locations and the size of the cast of extras. Shooting in a village suspended over a river on stilts, in elaborate Thai palaces and full-scale battles can’t have come cheaply and yet the budget couldn’t stretch to half-decent CGI?

The script and (over)acting are also sub-par – though Burbridge and Stretch do make for quite a sweet couple in the few romantic-al scenes they share. The plot, though ‘based on a true story’ is quite unbelievable at parts (and relies on something of a deus ex machina at its conclusion). Still, as mentioned above, the film isn’t total rubbish – there’s a really quite frightening use of elephants near the end and the historical mixture of the Siamese and Portuguese cultures was not something I’d previously been really aware of, so that was quite interesting. But ultimately, when the best bit of a film is due to an accidental innuendo when a character exclaims, ‘There must be something funny about your cock!’ you know you could be watching something better.