There is a salient dramatic moment in "Kings" when Halle Berry's character Millie is placed in handcuffs by the police at a time when her little children are looting a store during the 1992 riots. The officer berates Millie by saying, "I'm going to put you in hell." But he doesn't seem to realize that Millie's life is already hell when she recognizes that her children do not even know that what they are doing is wrong in looting the store.

In the wake of the Rodney King trial, where four L.A. police officers were acquitted after nearly beating a man to death with the attack captured on video, a tragic set of riots ensued in South Central L.A. Filmmaker Deniz Gamze Ergüven tries to put a human face on the riots with the caring foster mother Millie Dunbar and her children. But a problem is that there are so many children and confusing subplots that it difficult to follow the chain events as depicted in the film.

One of the curious plot strands is the relationship of Millie and a kind neighbor named Odie Hardison (Daniel Craig). There was clearly a romantic subtext between Odie and Millie, but on multiple occasions, the connection between the neighbors became farcical. This was especially true on the second occasion when Millie was handcuffed by the policemen, who sped off and left her in cuffs. Odie then performed a spectacular Houdini-like feat in freeing them from the cuffs.

The film was successful in showing how South Central became an inferno in 1992. It also framed the melodramatic family story effectively with footage from the Rodney King beating and the senseless shooting of Latasha Harlins by a proprietor in a grocery store. The central image of fire was well developed during the tragedy. The film is dedicated to the memory of Ryan De'Juan Dunbar, who lost his life during the riots.

The Rodney King riots serve as a distant background for this unguided look into black ghetto life inLA.

There is way too much foreplay to this movie. The actual story starts with a dramatic shooting seven weeks before the riots, then switches to an overburdened mother and her cantankerous neighbour, as well a feisty homeless girl (whom soon attracts the attention of two grown boys living with the mother). I felt there was more attention paid to the story of the homeless girl than the Halle Berry story. The problem with the movie is that this long distance of time and the parallel story lines creates a lack of focus. There is also a constant diversion to the unravelling of the times on the ever-present TV which lead to the fateful night of the riots. I appreciate the ticking time bomb intention. It all seems over-long, over-complicated and thus under-committed. If the story had just followed the mother I feel we could have had a more powerful movie. She has numerous kids, all with charm, and an action-packed story of her own. Once you realise the plot you'll quickly realise that her tale has all the impact needed to bring together all the elements of horror of that fateful day and night. I also believe more attention could have been paid to the riots and looting itself. It was a cheap shot to constantly have to follow that on grainy pre-digital tv images instead of something weightier produced by Hollywood itself. Too often we see this in movies these days. A great movie concept, but the vision is marred by wanting to show too much in too little time. I appreciate how hard that must be, but the means to the end needs to be entertaining, and despite the quality of some of the performances here and the originality and cuteness of some of the story ideas, I felt that that very cuteness ran counter to the seriousness of the parallel story (the homeless girl) and was too much on the plate. Something needed to go, or something needed to be handled differently. It's still a good movie for all that, and definitely an honest salute to those affected by the riots themselves, and Halle Berry's terrific performance will certainly make the effort worth the while.