‘RICHARD’ DOESN’T COMMIT DESPITE GREAT ACTING
There’s a feeling you get when you know you’re not getting the whole story. Complete stories feel true from every angle. Incomplete stories nag at the back of the mind: Something ’s missing.
It’s a mark of the surefire nature of “King Richard” that it emerges as a gripping, entertaining sports movie, despite the unmistakable sense that we’re not getting the complete picture. But what we get — the story of the emergence of tennis sensations Venus and Serena Williams, who began their careers being trained and managed by their father, Richard Williams — is interesting enough to hold our attention for 138 minutes.
Clearly, Richard Williams was a very determined guy. We learn that before Venus and Serena were even born, he wrote up a plan to turn them into tennis stars. He started training them as children, on a dilapidated court in Compton (Los Angeles County), and when the movie starts, he is determined to get his daughters to the next step — to find the professional training that can launch their careers.
“King Richard” is on solid ground in these early sections.
Professional training costs a fortune, and Richard is raising a family on a security guard’s salary. He needs to find someone who’ll train the girls free of charge, but he has no connections and no track record. No one takes him seriously. He knows the future of tennis, but that future won’t happen unless he can persuade someone in power to buy into his vision.
Watch Will Smith, as Richard, urging various people to take a close look at his daughters. He’s polite and responsive, but it’s as if there’s a brick wall behind his eyes. He will not allow rejection to penetrate his consciousness. He will not admit doubt. He has the single-mindedness of someone either great or crazy.
A true character study of such a person, which the movie promises by its title, might have been fascinating, but the audience never gets past the facade. We see Richard persisting, even when local gang members are threatening and beating him. But we also see him being unnecessarily hard on his children. We see him being capricious and arbitrary with the people trying to help him. We see
him guiding the girls’ careers in unconventional ways.
“King Richard” won’t commit. Is Richard right or wrong when he tells Venus to listen to him and not her coach? Is Richard right or wrong when he insists that his daughters not play the junior circuit? Yes, everything worked out for the best, but maybe Venus and Serena were so great that any path was going to lead to success.
By staying silent on these and other matters, the movie either implies that Richard was right about everything or it’s too squeamish to say otherwise. Is the whole truth complex? Then give us the complexity. As it stands, “King Richard” is merely ambiguous.
However, this is where the story of Venus and Serena — particularly that of Venus, the elder sister — takes over. Venus’ rise is such an amazing sports story that her father could have been Santa Claus and the movie would still be worth watching. It helps that both Saniyya Sidney (Venus) and Demi Singleton (Serena) are extremely engaging, and they obviously can play tennis.
Once the focus switches to Venus, whatever is going on with Richard becomes secondary. In her scenes on the court, Sidney is able to convey the double quality of a killer in embryo and a vulnerable kid. She shows us the inner steel of a champion, but she also shows that the steel is not quite hardened. Sidney does all this with little dialogue.
By the end, Richard may be the one you wonder about — what was with that guy, anyway? — but it’s Sidney’s Venus that you end up thinking about.