‘Venus and Serena gon’ shake up this world...’
Will Smith has been on an absolutely terrible run of form. Since returning from a four year hiatus in 2012 with Men in Black 3, Smith has starred in After Earth, Focus, Suicide Squad, Bright and Gemini Man – all of which have been flops. He has needed something substantial to win back hearts and minds for a while now and the American actor has had great success in biopics in the past, namely with Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness. Well, after a tough decade, it gives me great pleasure to opine that King Richard is not just the end of Smith’s fallow period, it might be the best performance of his career…
Richard Williams (Smith) is a man who will stop at nothing to ensure the best life for his daughters. For the eldest three that means a total devotion to school work, but for Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton) the focus is tennis. Despite the fact that tennis is traditionally a sport that is dominated by rich, white people, Williams prods, pokes and pushes his way to the top table. On the way he enlists the help of eccentric tennis coach Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal).
Now, I don’t like tennis. Mainly because, as stated above, like golf, it seems the preserve of the upper middle classes. But King Richard isn’t a film about tennis, just like Rocky isn’t a film about boxing. Instead, Reinaldo Marcus Green’s film is a message about the indefatigable, indomitable nature of the human spirit. Despite being undoubtedly a controversial figure, there is no doubt that Richard Williams and his daughters achieved something incredible through their meteoric rise from the streets of Compton to the courts of Wimbledon. Green, working from Zach Baylin’s script, does a great job in bringing all the disparate elements of this story together into something quite wonderful.
And this really is a redemption arc for Smith also. Based on the last decade, it was perfectly conceivable that Big Will had delivered his last great performance. Well, King Richard is proof that there is life in the old dog yet, and if this did yield his first Best Actor statuette, nobody could begrudge him that based on his turn here. This is far from a one man show however. Bernthal is also great playing against type as beleagured second mentor to the Williams sisters, and both Singleton and Sidney knock it out of the park while we’re on the subject, particularly Sidney as Venus, in a performance that surely earns her the title as one to watch for the future.
King Richard is not a particularly original film. Indeed, it hits all the familiar conventions and tropes of your typical feelgood sports movie, but the reasons those tropes are so ubiquitous is because they are so compelling. Forget the tennis, this is a film about winners.