The King's Warden

Looks like Boston got this in its second week in North America, and hopefully the snow doesn't screw its run up too badly - it's a good little movie that will probably get pushed out this weekend when Scream 7 swallows multiplexes in general and Pegasus 3 and the big furry(ish) track racing anime sucks up all the Asian cinema screens. But, right now the AMC app is simultaneously telling me that I have a ticket for Pegasus 3 in Imax tonight and that all of their theaters are closed indefinitely, so who knows?


Wanggwa Saneun Namja (The King's Warden aka The Man Who Lives with the King)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 February 2026 in AMC Causeway Street #3 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

The King's Warden has a hook that would make a terrific TV series - poor village campaigns to host exiled king for the economic benefits - except that history is not always going to accommodate the ensemble comedy set-up. Still, for all that Korean films can often give one tonal whiplash, this one handles the mood changes extremely well, though I imagine how well it plays for Korean viewers who know their country's history.

(Heck, how does it play now, in the aftermath of an attempted coup?)

The King in question is Li Hong-wi (Park Ji-hoon), who ascended as a teenager in 1452 but was overthrown by his uncle Sa-yong a year later and imprisoned in the palace, kept in line by minister Han Myeong-hoe (Yoo Ji-tae). Meanwhile, out in the sticks, village chief Eom Heung-doe (Yoo Hae-jin) is separated from his party during a hunting expedition and comes upon a village not unlike his own that is nevertheless eating extremely well. The secret, he's told, is that when the Minister of Justice was exiled from the palace, he settled there, and not only did the central government keep him well-supplied but the Minister wound up teaching the local children out of boredom. Heung-doe decides his village should ride this gravy train, and convinces Han to exile "Lord Nason" to them, not realizing it's the young king. Not only does this make the new situation highly volatile, but they are not far from where Hong-wi's uncle Crown Prince Geumseong (Lee Jun-hyuk) has been exiled, and the more ambitious Geumseong could use Hong-wi to give him some legitimacy if he challenges Sa-yong.

For as much as listing the major players makes the film sound full of palace intrigue, the front half at least plays more like an ensemble comedy, introducing Eom, his family, and neighbors on the one hand and Hong-wi and his concerned maid (Jeon Mi-do) on the other, and seeing how they bounce off each other. Mostly, it's a fine comedic vehicle for Yoo Hae-jin, playing the sort of puffed-up character whose clownish exasperation could get annoying if it weren't executed so well - it's the sort of Korean movie where the frustrated dialog is often a sort of loud, drawn-out wheeze - rounding into a more sympathetic shape as the film goes on. I don't know that I necessarily buy a deep bond between him and Park Ji-hoon's "Lord Nosan", though I like their parallel, connected journeys. Park does well starting from a more muted place than many filmmakers would have chosen.

It's a historical tale, so obviously it can't just be a situation comedy where the naive young king and the poor but practical village people learn from each other, but it evolves fairly smoothly, which is kind of impressive, considering that jarring tonal shifts can be one of the hallmarks of Korean cinema. The intrigue is introduced as a joke - the folks from the neighboring village being like "good luck with that, glad we dodged that arrow!" - and then sort of grows organically with the comedic material, as Hong-wi's sense of responsibility and connection to the people of this village grows, with Eom also reordering his personal and community responsibilities. The way Geumseong and Han Myeong-hoe emerge is interesting, with the former not a bad guy but maybe not thinking beyond the situations of the noble/ruling class, while the latter plays up his round baby face until it's time to be genuinely cruel and diabolical.

The whole thing is pretty nicely put together, too, making its modest scale work even when one might try to stretch to something more ornate. Even the CGI animals are mostly acceptable, in that they won't convince you that they're real but that they're definitely good enough if the other alternative is having a live tiger on set. In some ways, right-sizing is what makes this a nice surprise; there are a lot of opportunities to do too much or cut some corner, but every decision director Jang Hang-jun and company makes seems to make The King's Warden a more effective whole.