Much has been made of the historical significance of Antoine Fuqua's take on the story of Arthur and his knights. The ad men purport it to be the `untold true story that inspired the legend', while scornful detractors have dismissed it as being as fictional as the traditional myth. Unfortunately, the end product leaves the viewer caring little either way.
Far from the magical medieval world of Camelot with all its swashbuckling sword-fights and sorcery, Fuqua sets his story a thousand years earlier in the barren, misty wastelands of Northern England. A group of Sarmatian conscripts plucked as boys from their Eastern European homeland to fulfil a debt of gratitude to the Romans have just completed their 15 year tour of duty in Britain. Having served under legendary Roman soldier Arthur (Clive Owen), they have developed into a tight-knit fighting unit revered by their public and feared by the insurgents who plot raids from North of Hadrian's Wall.
The Romans' occupancy of Britain is coming to an end. Arthur dreams of a return to Rome with all its culture and liberty, while his knights are looking forward to going home to Sarmatia, but before they can leave they are given one final mission to rescue a wealthy Roman family caught in the far North in the middle of a Saxon invasion.
Hence we have the time-honoured scenario of a bunch of brave warriors outnumbered by thousands to one marching glibly into certain death, wise-cracking all the way. It is fairly standard stuff: The pretty boys with the wavy locks, neatly trimmed beards and chiselled features, led by the irritatingly handsome Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd) are offset by the lumbering, gurning Bors (Ray Winstone). All are fairly tidy in the fighting department, though it helps that arrows seem to bounce off them and opponents appear to queue patiently before being slaughtered by axe or sword. This film is so full of epic-battle, courage-under-fire staples and stereotypes, it makes it hard to take its sincere historical credentials seriously.
It doesn't help that Jerry Bruckheimer (never a man to favour substance over style) is producing it. With him, it seems, all subtlety and nuance is immediately binned in favour of another sweeping battle scene or Ray Winstone making tiresome gags about flatulence. Which is a shame, because there is a lot of potential intrigue amongst the trite, ham-fisted set-pieces. Lancelot and Arthur are best chums, but both harbour feelings for the beguiling Guinevere (Keira Knightley). You get the impression Fuqua is keen to explore this conflict more, but was perhaps vetoed by Bruckheimer who evidently wanted to forego an emotion-wrought love triangle in favour of more footage of men in armour running at each other really fast.
Performance-wise, King Arthur is adequate, but it is very difficult for actors to be believable when they are spouting such clichéd, clunking dialogue. When it comes to brooding, it is hard to match Owen, but he is hardly physically imposing. When he brazenly stands alone on a hilltop in full battle regalia facing hordes of Saxons, he is not so much the bristling epitome of menace as the simpering pinnacle of high camp. As it becomes clear to him that his beloved Rome is tarnished with corruption and greed, he faces an identity crisis: Half-Roman and half-Briton, he is forced make decisions about who or what he must fight for, but all his inner demons are masked by the same drab, humourless expression. Even the prospect of bedding Knightley isn't enough to put a smile on his face. There is just no pleasing some people.
The rest of the cast are OK. Winstone is ludicrously over-the-top as the boisterous Bors and Stellan Skarsgard is a scene-stealer as the Saxon leader Cerdic. The excellent Australian actor Joel Edgerton plays Gawain, but is underrated and hence woefully underused. None of them, however, are good enough to make this anything other than a turgid time-filler.
Bragging about accuracy is fine, but to then employ every unimaginative device in the book is nonsensical. The Saxons here are portrayed as filthy, snarling savages raping, pillaging and looting their way through the countryside while the knights have honour, comradery and dashing good looks on their side. Fuqua would have been better off saying `bugger historical precision', slapping a pair of tights on Gruffudd and Owen and settling for a more traditional Camelot. Instead we have ghastly allusions to the established Authurian legend the scene where Arthur retrieves Excalibur from the stone is particularly awful, and Merlin, instead of being a kindly old wizard, is a bizarre tree-hugging loon caked in body paint.
It is difficult to be too critical. Filmmakers deserve credit for trying new ideas and straying from the beaten path, but this effort doesn't know whether to be wholly original or stick to well-worn formulas and it ends up as a curious hybrid of the two. There is no mystery and no magic, but nothing new cinematically either. The film itself is, like the argument between the producers and the historians, essentially pointless.
6/10
Far from the magical medieval world of Camelot with all its swashbuckling sword-fights and sorcery, Fuqua sets his story a thousand years earlier in the barren, misty wastelands of Northern England. A group of Sarmatian conscripts plucked as boys from their Eastern European homeland to fulfil a debt of gratitude to the Romans have just completed their 15 year tour of duty in Britain. Having served under legendary Roman soldier Arthur (Clive Owen), they have developed into a tight-knit fighting unit revered by their public and feared by the insurgents who plot raids from North of Hadrian's Wall.
The Romans' occupancy of Britain is coming to an end. Arthur dreams of a return to Rome with all its culture and liberty, while his knights are looking forward to going home to Sarmatia, but before they can leave they are given one final mission to rescue a wealthy Roman family caught in the far North in the middle of a Saxon invasion.
Hence we have the time-honoured scenario of a bunch of brave warriors outnumbered by thousands to one marching glibly into certain death, wise-cracking all the way. It is fairly standard stuff: The pretty boys with the wavy locks, neatly trimmed beards and chiselled features, led by the irritatingly handsome Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd) are offset by the lumbering, gurning Bors (Ray Winstone). All are fairly tidy in the fighting department, though it helps that arrows seem to bounce off them and opponents appear to queue patiently before being slaughtered by axe or sword. This film is so full of epic-battle, courage-under-fire staples and stereotypes, it makes it hard to take its sincere historical credentials seriously.
It doesn't help that Jerry Bruckheimer (never a man to favour substance over style) is producing it. With him, it seems, all subtlety and nuance is immediately binned in favour of another sweeping battle scene or Ray Winstone making tiresome gags about flatulence. Which is a shame, because there is a lot of potential intrigue amongst the trite, ham-fisted set-pieces. Lancelot and Arthur are best chums, but both harbour feelings for the beguiling Guinevere (Keira Knightley). You get the impression Fuqua is keen to explore this conflict more, but was perhaps vetoed by Bruckheimer who evidently wanted to forego an emotion-wrought love triangle in favour of more footage of men in armour running at each other really fast.
Performance-wise, King Arthur is adequate, but it is very difficult for actors to be believable when they are spouting such clichéd, clunking dialogue. When it comes to brooding, it is hard to match Owen, but he is hardly physically imposing. When he brazenly stands alone on a hilltop in full battle regalia facing hordes of Saxons, he is not so much the bristling epitome of menace as the simpering pinnacle of high camp. As it becomes clear to him that his beloved Rome is tarnished with corruption and greed, he faces an identity crisis: Half-Roman and half-Briton, he is forced make decisions about who or what he must fight for, but all his inner demons are masked by the same drab, humourless expression. Even the prospect of bedding Knightley isn't enough to put a smile on his face. There is just no pleasing some people.
The rest of the cast are OK. Winstone is ludicrously over-the-top as the boisterous Bors and Stellan Skarsgard is a scene-stealer as the Saxon leader Cerdic. The excellent Australian actor Joel Edgerton plays Gawain, but is underrated and hence woefully underused. None of them, however, are good enough to make this anything other than a turgid time-filler.
Bragging about accuracy is fine, but to then employ every unimaginative device in the book is nonsensical. The Saxons here are portrayed as filthy, snarling savages raping, pillaging and looting their way through the countryside while the knights have honour, comradery and dashing good looks on their side. Fuqua would have been better off saying `bugger historical precision', slapping a pair of tights on Gruffudd and Owen and settling for a more traditional Camelot. Instead we have ghastly allusions to the established Authurian legend the scene where Arthur retrieves Excalibur from the stone is particularly awful, and Merlin, instead of being a kindly old wizard, is a bizarre tree-hugging loon caked in body paint.
It is difficult to be too critical. Filmmakers deserve credit for trying new ideas and straying from the beaten path, but this effort doesn't know whether to be wholly original or stick to well-worn formulas and it ends up as a curious hybrid of the two. There is no mystery and no magic, but nothing new cinematically either. The film itself is, like the argument between the producers and the historians, essentially pointless.
6/10