“One Night With the King” (Gener8Xtion)
A Passion-less Story of Esther
In the wake of “The Passion of the Christ” Hollywood has discovered religion sells. Many scripts and stories of a religious nature are on the drawing boards for future production. One of the first out of the gate is an adaptation of the Old Testament story of Esther. The film is called “One Night With the King.”
The unfortunately named Tiffany Dupont takes on the role of the orphaned Jewish girl named Hadassah. She lives with her Uncle Mordecai (John Rhys-Davies) in Persia where the ruler is King Xerxes (Luke Goss). One day it is announced that all the attractive young women of the land will be brought forward for one night with the King. From this group Xerxes will choose a queen.
Because she is Jewish and the Jews are not in favor in the land, Mordecai changes Hadassah’s name to Esther. And when Xerxes selects her she becomes Queen Esther. Later Xerxes is talked into terrorizing all the Jews in his kingdom. To protect her people Esther decides to go before the king unbidden. This could result in her being put to death.
All of this is spelled out in the Book of Esther in the Old Testament. The makers of this movie take that framework and then add some speculative occurrences on to it. This doesn’t dispute the basic facts but it does somewhat dilute the effectiveness of the story.
Dupont makes her Esther a pretty enough girl to be chosen as Queen, but once Xerxes has made his choice he appears to lose interest in her. There is no chemistry or passion between Dupont and Goss’ characters, and that is a shame. Even in a biblical story there should be some heat between a man who chooses a woman out of a choice of many, and the woman who dreams of being the Queen to a handsome king.
Everything about this movie is on an even keel. There are threats made to the Jews but there is never any real danger shown. You never feel any sense of desperation that would make Esther sacrifice her life for the good of her people. There is a lot of lip service given to these circumstances but never any intensity.
The names of Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif are thrown out as “star power” for the movie, but O’Toole only has a brief cameo at the start of the film and Sharif plays a minor character in the movie. The two actors who make the best impressions are James Callis as the evil and treacherous Hamen, and Tommy “Tiny” Lister as the head eunuch Hagai.
Callis has been seen for the past few years on “Battlestar Gallactica” and has made quite an impression with his weak and evil character. In “One Night With the King” he tackles his role as the evil one with relish and grabs the spotlight whenever he is on screen. Lister gets his attention by portraying a gentle soul who befriends Esther from her first appearance at the court.
The film is rated PG for mild violence.
“One Night With the King” is a family friendly film that brings a Bible story to life. For this reason it will have a built in audience. Still if the movie had been more than a bland interpretation of the story it could have skewed broader. The film has a good look to it with the sets either being very lavish or computer generated, and it appears to have a cast of thousands – as the old ads used to say. But though it looks good on the outside the fiery heart of the film is missing.
Mel Gibson gave “passion” to “The Passion of the Christ.” Someone should have done the same for “One Night With the King.”
I scored “One Night With the King” a biblical 5 out of 10.
