King of the Ants
| King of the Ants | |
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| Directed by | Stuart Gordon |
| Produced by | Duffy Hecht David Michael Latt |
| Screenplay by | Charlie Higson |
| Based on |
King of the Ants by Charlie Higson |
| Starring |
Daniel Baldwin Kari Wuhrer George Wendt Chris McKenna |
| Music by | Bobby Johnston |
| Cinematography | Mac Ahlberg |
| Edited by | David Michael Latt |
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| Distributed by | The Asylum |
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Release date
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Running time
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101 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
King of the Ants is a 2003 American revenge film directed by Stuart Gordon, written by Charlie Higson, and starring Alex Pautler. It was adapted from Higson's novel of the same name.
The film follows the story of Sean Crawley (Chris McKenna), a struggling young man trying to make ends meet by painting houses in suburban Los Angeles. One day, Sean meets "Duke" Wayne (George Wendt), who introduces Sean to his boss, a shady developer named Ray Matthews (Daniel Baldwin). Ray hires Sean as a spy, and orders him to follow Eric Gatley (Ron Livingston), an accountant who has been investigating Ray's company. Problems start when Ray, while drunk, offers Sean $13,000 to kill Eric. Sean accepts his offer and, although ambivalent, ends up killing Gatley by breaking into his house and beating him to death. When Sean goes to collect his pay, however, he is double-crossed and when he insists that they pay him, he is kidnapped and taken to Ray's secluded farm. It emerges that Matthews never had any intention of paying Sean for the killing, for he only wanted to use and eliminate him. But Sean survives from having a bullet put in his head then reveals that he had taken Gatley's work file of evidence and hidden it along with his documentation of events leading to the murder.
When torture fails to make him disclose the whereabouts of the file, Sean is then brutally beaten about the head with golf clubs many times by Ray and his henchmen daily for weeks, in an effort to destroy his memory. After suffering a heavy amount of trauma, Sean escapes, killing Duke, and finds his way to a downtown homeless shelter where Gatley's widow, Susan (Kari Wuhrer), takes him under her wing, oblivious to his role in her personal tragedy. After she nurses him back to normal, he feels he has been reborn and they become lovers and he moves into her house. But after a few weeks, Susan finds his file describing the murder and, enraged, physically attacks him. Defending himself, Sean accidentally kills her.
Having lost what he saw as his redemption and rebirth, more angry and cynical than ever, Sean returns to Ray's farm and methodically and ruthlessly exacts revenge on his captors; having arrived before Ray, he finds Duke's body and decapitates it, removing the wounds that would implicate his involvement. While waiting for Ray, Sean burns Duke's head in a fire pit along with pictures of Susan, exclaiming that if it wasn't for him and his friends he could have had a happy life. He hides in the house while Ray's henchmen search for him. Sean jumps Carl upstairs and hits him in the chest with a sledgehammer and kicks him down the stairs, Carl lies on the floor unable to move from internal bleeding. Beckett comes into the house to find Carl, when Sean breaks his leg and hits his back, paralyzing him.
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