Soderbergh Marathon: Part 5

Intro

King of the Hill (1993)

What an unfortunate title.  Four years after this movie was made, the popular sitcom King of the Hill forever made googling this title impossible, unless you also specified the year it was made or the fact that it was a movie.  Making matters worse is that the title isn't really essential or descriptive.  You can come up with a better title than this.  In Steven Soderbergh's defense, King of the Hill was the title of the memoir this movie is based on, and I assume is a reference to a certain neighborhood of St. Louis.

I had never heard of King of the Hill before I began this project.  Not many people have, judging by the fact that it made $1.1 million at the box office.  And like I said, once the popular sitcom came around, King of the Hill belonged to them.  Unless you're a huge Soderbergh fan or doing what I'm doing, I don't know how you'd even come across this movie.  And that's a shame.  Because this movie is great.

This movie is set in Depression era St. Louis and despite a limited budget, the movie really immerses you in the setting.  It looks and feels like the Depression.  And it really feels like St. Louis.  I especially enjoyed the multiple references to getting or not getting Pepper Martin's autograph, who you probably don't know if you aren't familiar with Cardinals history.  I doubt it was filmed here in my hometown, but since it's set in 1933, it's irrelevant that it's not.  It's so far removed from modern day, it's not like you'll notice.

King of the Hill features an extremely young cast.  The story puts an unusually high burden on the protagonist of the story, who is featured in 100 percent of scenes I believe.  The protagonist in this case means 13-year-old Jesse Bradford, playing Aaron.  Relying on such a young kid to essentially make or break your movie is risky, but Bradford is quite good in this role.  A very young Adrien Brody is a fellow tenant who helps show Aaron the ropes of how to survive.  A 16-year-old Amber Benson and 14-year-old Katherine Heigl also have minor parts in the movie.  If casting can be determined by successful careers, holy hell did the casting director knock this one out of the park.  Bradford was prominently featured in a movie before, but the rest were pretty much unknowns.

Those aren't the only actors though.  There's a friendly teacher played by Karen Allen, most known for Raiders of the Lost Ark, but who has a pretty good film career outside of that.  And Elizabeth McGovern plays a prickly prostitute from across the hall, who frequents a man known as Mr. Mungo, played by Spalding Gray.  I note Gray because I will be seeing him in another Soderbergh movie and Soderbergh also made a documentary on him.  He's fine here, but nothing to indicate Soderbergh's fascination with the man.

This movie is not particularly long, but it spends most of its running time kicking the main character down, and it chronicles how that kicking has forced him to use his smarts and his will to survive.  It's so far my absolute favorite of the five movies I've watched and I cannot recommend it enough.  It's so under the radar that you can watch the movie on Youtube for free.  Watch that movie and enjoy.

4 stars