One Night With the King

With murderous intrigue, betrayal and deceit, exotic jewels and lavish settings, this biblical epic sounds good on paper, but it falls flat on the big screen. Based on a novel by Tommy Tenney and Mark Andrew Olsen, this film from director Michael O. Sajbel chronicles a peasant’s journey to becoming the queen of Persia. Hadassah (Tiffany Dupont) struggles as a Jewish peasant in ancient Babylon. But when King Xerxes divorces his wife, Hadassah hides her religious beliefs to become Queen Esther of Persia, so she can ultimately prevent a Jewish genocide. Meanwhile, Persia is on the brink of war with Greece after the Greeks kill Xerxes’ father, and conspirators plot to overthrow the king. With a campy script and attempts to turn a bland film into a brilliant one with brief appearances by Hollywood superstars like Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif, One Night With the King isn’t deserving of one night at the theater.