At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Made in 2007 this Spanish film is one that went under the radar which was a shame. It is all about a man imaginatively called 'Quim' - pronounced 'Keem' but still a cracking name. He is off to meet his ex girlfriend and try to put back his failed relationship back together, when he stops to fill up his car with petrol. There he has an encounter with a young and very light fingered young lady. He then heads off up this lonely mountain road.Then out of the blue he gets shot at - despite owning a Volvo (with an NCAP rating of 4 I believe) he still gets hit. Only after he tries to leave does he realise what real trouble he is in.Now there are a few plot holes here or rather some loose ends that I have only really realised on reflection. The plot is basic but the reveal or should I say reveals are good enough to prompt more than at least a couple of raised eyebrows. Good performances all round too; please note this is not a horror in the sense of blood and gore but more of a psychological thriller type. In Spanish with good sub titles - a film for those who really do like their films to be off the beaten track.

El Rey de la Montaña (known as King of the Hill amongst English speaking audiences) is set in Spain & starts as a man named Quim (Leonardo Sbaragalia) stops at a petrol station to fill up, there he meets a young girl named Bea (Maria Valverde). While in the toilets they have sex & Bea steals Quim's wallet, back on the open road deep in the Spanish countryside Quim sees Bea's car & decides to go after it but his car is shot at & he himself is shot in the leg by an unknown shooter. With no phone signal Quim cannot call for help, while driving along the shooter steps out in from of his car & Quim runs them down, Quim's car is shot to pieces & continues on foot where he finds Bea stranded with a puncture. They must work together to try & survive the continued onslaught as more shooters come after them, with no transport or food the odds seem stacked against them...Not to be confused or anyway associated with the animated TV series King of the Hill this Spanish thriller was edited, co-written & directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego & feels like a backwoods brutality flick without the brutality. The basic set-up of some crazed killers shooting innocent people in some remote wooded location is fairly unoriginal King of the Hill doesn't strive for the excesses of the genre, the violence is minimal & there's no torture & next to no gore. The script mainly focuses on the survival of Quim & Bea, the script focuses on their struggle to overcome the odds in a harsh & unforgiving landscape while being hunted down like animals. The entire script is minimalist, we never find out either Quim or Bea's last names, what they do for a living, the precise details of why they were driving there in the first place or any significant personal information that might have fleshed them out a bit, I am sure many will like this but as a consequence I found it hard to like or relate to either of them & considered them not much more than cardboard cutouts. However, during these scenes where Quim & Bea are fighting for their lives & being hunted King of the Hill is a fairly effective thriller with a few tense set pieces & an unrelenting pace although it's not perfect, while Quim was handcuffed in the back of the police jeep why didn't the killers shoot him then? Did they not notice his hand & arm cuffed to the grill? Why didn't they shoot Bea when she went out to get the key for the cuffs from the dead cop? Then there's the ending, while some again might like it I found it rather silly. It seems two teenage boys are playing some sort of game, a game where everyone they kill they gets points & the one with the most points is the winner. Other than that there's no great reason behind it, we never know why these kids are playing such a game or who Quim ran down with his car. I quite liked King of the Hill as a tense little backwoods survivalist thriller while the focus was on Quim & Bea but as soon as the shooters are introduced it fell apart from & the obvious computer game references stood out a mile. Is that what King of the Hill is trying to say? That violent computer games turns kids into killers? That was the impression I was left with. Of course films such as King of the Hill are perfectly fine & it doesn't matter that they show young kids shooting people for fun as part of a game...The final fifteen minutes switches the focus from Quim & Bea to the two killers & there are so many shots that replicate first person shooter games it gets silly, the classic one is the first person perspective shot with the gun in the bottom right hand corner of the screen pointed forward, or the reloading shot or the sniper shot seen through the telescope as they cover their backs & wander around like little soldiers. The violence & gore is minimal, a couple of people get shot & that's about it. In fact the body count is rather restrained too. The locations are suitably remote & harsh while the photography is very nice. Although the camera doesn't move that much director López-Gallego frames his shots very well with some striking imagery & makes use of the natural terrain.The film certainly has nice production values & is well made but the locations used help a lot. Filmed in Spanish & subtitled in English the acting seems OK but you can never quite be sure what they are saying or how they are saying it.King of the Hill is alright when it's a straight backwoods survivalist thriller but falls apart when it tries to say something, the computer game parallels may not be obvious to all but anyone who has ever played a first person shooter will notice them immediately. It has it's moments I suppose & is well made but overall I can't say I liked it that much.

It's always fun to watch unsuspecting travellers encounter the horrors of the back-roads, so I was rather looking forward to King of The Hill. We follow Quim, on a mission to get back together with his girlfriend but put a little off track when an impromptu gas station tryst with a mysterious lady ends in her stealing his wallet. They meet again, but not before both have come under fire from a sniper, and the movie proceeds with the two of them trying to evade their unseen antagonists. Director Gonzalo Lopez Galego keeps things tight and mysterious for much of the time, concentrating on pace over character and attractive visuals and periodically jolting the viewers with short sharp bursts of action, skilfully turning the heat up moment by moment. The mountainous setting, trees, slopes and blue sky are well captured by the gorgeous cinematography of Jose David Montero, a picturesque setting at interesting odds with the impersonal menace that lurks within. Happily, the setting isn't just used for prettiness but excitement too, with rivers, trees, pitfalls and bushes all obstacles to navigate, there's an adventurous spirit to goings on that takes the film closer to classics like Deliverance than the more clichéd back-woods nastiness that tend to dominate films of this type. Stars Leonardo Sbaraglia and Maria Valverde make for a sympathetic pairing, wisely the film doesn't stop to long to give them a relationship but they have a certain mild chemistry that makes their bond under adversity a compelling one. For around two thirds or so of its length King of The Hill is rather great, hardly earth shattering in its events or approach but sufficiently well handled that it really stands out, unfortunately it doesn't end the same way. Like most films of its mysterious ilk, there's a "big reveal" here, and it's deeply ill-advised, an attempt at sombre significance that flops hard. A turn in events that would be unlikely and fairly tricky to pull off even if it were a significant part of the film from the start, here the film expects us to just buy the plot turn and then continues in the same uncompromising vein as before. To say much about why it doesn't work would be going into spoiler territory and since other have enjoyed this much more than I and not been troubled by the finale I won't divulge events, but for me it was daft verging on laughable, it not only took all the wind out of the film's sails but also rather tainted what had gone before. A saddening turn of events, as I wanted to dig this one and it came close to being a winner, but I can only go by my final impression, which was one of disappointment. A 5/10 then, even though for a fair amount of the runtime this is more like a high 7.

I thought this film was very good up until it is revealed that the sniper is a child with his brother who has a double barrelled shotgun out in the woods and mountains, playing a so called game called 'King Of The Hill'. If you weren't on the main character's side before, knowing now that the killers are a couple of stupid kids (the children are in no way menacing and i think the acting looks as if they should be, but couldn't quite do menacing as they are children) should have made you completely on his side by now. I'm not saying that having kids as the killers wasn't an effective idea; as I had no idea it was going to be children, and indeed it worked a treat in my opinion. However, for me, this idea lead to a disastrous ending, with the film portraying a somewhat guilt filled, failed meaningful point from the main character's perspective that 'It's just a kid, I can't kill a child' (the struggling and biting child effectively pushes him to drown the boy), which seems to cross the main character's mind when he gets the upper hand on the child stalkers with guns. Here's the thing,If your entire day was being governed (to put it politely) by someone who was shooting at you (and who already shot you in the leg) regularly from a distance, pinning you down, killing your friend, randomly killing animals, effectively hunting you down into the ground; it's simply not conceivable that you would develop a conscience when you finally get to meet the one who was shooting at you.