Prince Hal, drunken and self-obsessed, sympathises with his servant, John Falstaff, when Prince Hal has been disinherited from his sick father, the King, in favour of younger brother Thomas, but when reckless Thomas is killed in battle and Henry IV soon dies, Hal, unwilling to ascend the throne, becomes king and confronts his father's entire left-hand side of a divided Kingdom, past hostilities and growing French provocations against his Kingdom.
The king is a fantasy series that assigns new motifs to characters, changes events, and brings in new dramas. That's not necessarily a mistake of the movie, because the ensuing drama was astonishingly planned, timed, and provided depth to the characters. The king was portrayed as peace-loving and He did not urge him to enter France just to provoke it by attempting to kill him. Chalamiet's achievement is remarkable, displaying a complexities and inner strife that Shakespeare never had to engender. Sir John FalStaff's Shakespeare character is becoming more realistic with his real-life wit and strong background in warfare and strategy. Edgerton grows in stature in the role of Chalamet, who delivers a complex human instead of something superficial.
Cyclical action scenes in the film underscore the realism: the medieval way of warfare turns out to be brutal and dangerous, with soldiers deploying fewer swords to destroy enemies and more to kill them; and knights reeling under the burden of shields, risking deadly slip-ups in muddy battlegrounds. You can also gauge the influence of HBO's popular series Game Of Thrones by how these violent and bloody conflicts play out. It is visually superb, but the real strength of the film lies in the plot, which drives it to do so. The King has some perfect actors in his armoury: Mendelsohn as the unscrupulous and loathsome Henry IV; Robert Pattkinson as a campy cool daughter; Lily-rose Depp as the outspoken and witty Princess; and, above all, Sean Harris as the manipulative political adviser Lord William.
Which is to say that a large part of this film's rationale ends up on the chubby shoulders of Chalamiet. And, as an example of what to do if he's not wandering around Northern Italy wistfully, or dreamily pretending to be a man, the King performs rather well. ChalAmet is doing a robust job, lifting up his flaccid poise and rising to the rôle of a rising man. He receives good support from Eddie, Teddy FalStaff (a distinctly Machiavellian character in the film) and, most notably, Sean Harries, as Henri's close ally at court. All of the different strict men on the film find their shade and handle the scriptwriter's set weight with grace. They are all solid walls against which ChalAmet can bounce.
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