Boseman Kills it in ‘Message From The King’, A Formulaic Revenge Story

Netflix has a funny way of just showing up on your front door with content that you are supremely interested in that you didn’t know existed a few days ago. Some of their big hitters have months of promotion, especially their annual original TV shows, but even some movies get in on the hype train before dropping into a glorious accessible streaming. But there are plenty of shows that show up for dinner and even brought some wine with them, but still didn’t tell you they were coming beforehand. Message from the King was like that for me. Now, let’s be fair. The line between genre and cliché is getting pretty cloudy for this type of movie. The man, with a code, built on nothing but discipline and sheer will, goes up against seemingly insurmountable odds to avenge someone or something. If you’ve seen Taken or Man on Fire or even John Wick, you’ve seen this movie before. That doesn’t make it an outright bad film by any stretch. You’re just not going to see anything wholly original or even doing something better than those previous films either. One thing that carries some uniqueness (at least in comparison to the aforementioned films) is that there isn’t some absurd body count. The action is focused and impactful without the need for the video game enemy spawn type populace. The movie is, pseudo-mystery, essentially, with the protagonist peeling each layer of the onion back until it reaches a climax. The layers peeled, often, in brutal fashion.

So if this not all that unique of …