King Arthur- Review Thread

King Arthur- Review Thread




Legend or history, the King Arthur stories have survived countless tellings, re-tellings, and re-imaginings. Countless books, short stories, poems, and movie have been written on the subject, but never has Arthur’s sword been put to such realism as it is in Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur, which says it’s based on what the myths are based on. Fuqua removes the hoaky romanticism from the tale and places in the grittier real world where the long drawn- out death speeches are eliminated or there is no true line between good and evil, and the villain is almost as sympathetic as the hero. Fuqua and his screenwriter David Franzoni’s interpretation owes a lot to the works of Shakespeare (who doesn’t though) and Kurosawa, but the characters, which actually have some depth, and some excellent writing give the movie legs to stand on the shoulders of those giants instead of merely lounging on them which most epics are satisfied with.

In this rendering of the legend, Arthur (Clive Owen) is a Roman military officer who leads his knights of the Round Table: Lancelot (Ioann Gruffudd), Bors (Ray Winstone), Galahad (Hugh Dancy), Gawain (Joel Edgerton), and Tristan (Mads Mikkelsen) on their final mission before they are free from their services to Rome. They encounter native British, led by Merlin (Stephen Dillane) and Guinevere (Keira Knightly), and must fight the invading Saxons led by Cerdic (Stellan Skarsgård). I applaud the casting crew for not filling the cast with big name American actors just to get a full house in American theaters.

In a cast with many standout performances, Clive Owen does the best as Arthur himself. He plays him as a man with a haunted past whose loyalties are split between Britain and the Empire. His Arthur is very reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Another standout, a surprising one at that, is Stellan Skarsgård’s Cedric, the leader of the Saxons. He plays him with almost a sad feeling, as a man who has seen too much bloodshed in his lifetime but can’t get away from it.

The actors who play Arthur’s knights get one aspect of their roles exactly perfect, their camaraderie. We can tell that they’ve been through hell and back with each other and have seen many friends fall in battle. Excellent performances all around. Keira Knightly does alright as Guinevere, but her character is under-written in the script. Merlin has a glorified cameo.

I liked how through most of the movie the fight scenes take back seat to the characters even though there is a pretty neat one on a lake of ice. The final battle goes a bit too long, but is well choreographed. You could tell they were holding some of the more gruesome stuff back for the DVD release.

King Arthur is probably the best Arthur movie since Excalibur and maybe a bit better than that one. It never falls into the clasps of the deadly melodrama trap or cliché trap. By giving the characters dimensions beyond stereotype, it goes from the league of average epics to the league of extraordinary epics.




it ready a good movie