King Arthur

It’s not your father’s Knights of the Round Table. Director Antoine Fuqua and producer Jerry Bruckheimer decide to re-tell the legend of King Arthur, but their quest falls short…

RATING: 3 out of 5

Following this summer’s epic My Big Fat Greek Invasion?oh, I’m sorry ? Troy?I was hoping that King Arthur would deliver. It would be really cool to have a solid, historical epic along the lines of The Last Samurai or Gladiator. Now, the hook of this historical epic film intrigued me. It depicts the actual Arthur that Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur was based off of, a loyal Roman centurion who represent the Empire in Brittania. So?what’s the story of this King Arthur? I’d love to tell you, but I can’t as the film sure didn’t provide a coherent plot. I can only assume this was the quest I was charged by God to fulfill: find the plot of this movie and return it to you, the moviegoers. I guess I failed in this holiest of holy pursuits because I asked myself one time too many ?Where are we going with this?? Eventually, I started to ask Arthur from the back of the royal litter ?Are we there yet?? because I was starting to lose my excitement over returning to Camelot…

Well, actually, it wasn’t Camelot where the real King Arthur hung his sword and shield, but a keep connected to Hadrian’s Wall. Hadrian’s Wall is kind of the UK equivalent to China’s Great Wall, but nowhere near the scope. So, it’s not a ?Great? Wall, so much as it is a ?Pretty Keen? Wall.

All right, all right, let me see if I can try and make some sense of this two-hour exercise of frustration?

Arthur rides across Britannia, upholding the values of the Roman Empire with his loyal knights fighting by his side. As these guys travel from coast to coast on horseback, they talk about chicks, drink, and pine for their homelands and the families and loved ones who await their return. Occasionally they will rescue people from pesky Britons that are all woaded up with no place to raid. As the knights’ collected body count rises, they themselves countdown to their discharge orders coming from Rome. And on the day that those orders arrive, Arthur is told that the Pope has one more job for his knights…

Go on a quest for a Holy Grail? Nah, The Vatican’s already got one and it’s very nice. (Of course, back in Rome, the Pope is huddled with his Cardinals snickering ?I told Arthur we’ve already got one!?) No, this is more of ?family business? as The Pope’s favorite godson, Alecto, is on the wrong side of Hadrian’s Wall and the Saxons are currently working their way through Great Britain on their ?Burning Down the Village? tour. (Thank you, Cornwall, good night!) So, it’s up to Arthur and the Knights to assure safe passage.

Now this is where the movie kind-of-sort-of starts and then we plod across Britannia, following a brief ?Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ancient Roman Conquest? introduction that really introduces Lancelot?even though this movie is called King Arthur?

Confused yet? Brace yourself, there’s more on the way.

So once more, our knights are off on their charge. Along their ride to the north, the guys talk about chicks, drink, and pine for their homelands and the families and love ones who await their return. They reach Alecto and his pious father, Marcus Honorius, ruling over their people with an iron fist. Well, this doesn’t settle well with Arthur, so he manages to rally the people together to join him in a mass exodus from their corner of Britain and discovers that while priming Alecto for the ?Big Chair? and the ?Funky Hat? at The Vatican, ol’ Marcus has been playing God and torturing the local pagans. Among the pagans found alive is a girl that calls herself Guinevere. After one bath, resetting her broken fingers, and a good night’s sleep, Arthur discovers Guinevere is a serious hottie who can kick ass with a bow and arrow. (Bonus!) So, while seeking his identity between a servant of Rome and a child of Britannia, Arthur is also realizing ?Hey, it’s good to be the Once and Future King.?

As our heroic knights continue to lead the Britons and Romans to the safety of Hadrian’s Wall’s (and along their ride south, talk about chicks, drink, and pine for their homelands and the families and love ones who await their return), the Saxons are hot on their trail. Now how do you know the Saxons are the bad guys in this flick? Well, they wear a lot of furry armor and scowl a lot. Especially their leader, Cerdic, played by Stellan Skarsgard who graduated Magna Cum Laude from the ?Kevin Costner Institute of Dialects.? (One minute, he’s got a British accent, and then in other scenes he sounds like Gregg Allman?and this guy’s Swedish!) Now, why are they there? I think it’s because they are tired of wearing their furry armor, and their leader’s constant scowling is making then cranky. Who knows? These are the bad guys and they’ve got villages to burn, villagers to kill, and livestock to pillage?and hopefully, they will get better at it the closer they get to the Pretty Keen Wall of Britannia.

As you can see, this movie is all over the map of the Roman Empire. King Arthur breaks all the rules of writing, and not in a good way. When characters say things like ?Don’t worry, you will see me again. I shall return home.? and ?If I die, burn my body and cast my ashes into an east wind??, they might as well tattoo ?I’m not living to see another sunrise!? across their foreheads as these characters will be lining up for the slab. Then there are the characters upon characters upon characters that you cannot keep track of unless you’ve got a playcard. Many of these supporting players you don’t get to know, nor do you care about them as they are merely reduced to ?third moving target from the left? in many of the impressive battle sequences.

And what exactly did this movie want to be? One minute, it’s a historical epic. The next, it’s The Magnificent Seven with swords. And the next instance we have Kiera Knightly as ?The Woad Warrior? wearing a two-piece leather bikini seen only on Gor cover art from Boris Vallejo. (Please reference earlier ?Bonus!?) Antoine Fuqua really didn’t know what to do when it came to creating a great epic, and having an aimless script certainly didn’t help matters. The writers attempted to remain true to history, but work in some cool special effects at the same time, all the while remaining true to the popular Arthurian legend, dropping hints of Lancelot wanting to get freaky with Guinevere, but never following up with it.

But while Fuqua fails to create an inspiring epic, he does manage to showcase some terrific performances from King Arthur’s assembled players. Clive Owen’s Arthur is solid. Rock solid, giving the character a fresh interpretation that goes against the norm. Kiera Knightly, suede sports bra and all, really personifies the power of charm. Even with the lousy script and somewhat chintzy dialogue they gave her, Knightly manages to turn in a delightful performance. In fact, the knights themselves ? Tristan, Gawain, Galahad, Bors, and Dagonet ? carry the film. You grow to like these guys and feel for them, to a degree. I should have cared a lot more for them, but their development was stilted by the inclusion of so many supporting roles in such a short period of time. But these actors were professionals, and succeeded to transcend the second-rate script.

But the real hero of this film is Ioan Gruffud. Chances are, you don’t recognize the name but you would recognize this guy. In James Cameron’s Titanic, he was Fifth Officer Lowe (the one crewman who turned around his lifeboat and went back for survivors). That was his formal introduction to mainstream American audiences but he really won over the colonies with his portrayal of Horatio Hornblower on A&E. Now, he’s in King Arthur as Lancelot and delivers with interest the finest performance in the film. Instead of the pious, purer-than-thou, can’t-be-beaten, wide-eyed-for-Guinevere knight, Gruffud gives us a Lancelot that is a bit cocky, somewhat insightful, but still vulnerable in many ways. It is a humanized Lancelot, sans the lofty soliloquies on proper virtues of the knight and regrets on betraying a friendship. His performance is nothing less than stellar, and I’m thrilled to see him get a leading role in a major motion picture. (And if you like his Lancelot, get ready for him in 2005 when he leads The Fantastic Four as Reed Richards!)

I wish I could say the performances I’ve cited makes the movie worth seeing; but while it is a huge step above Troy, something is still missing from King Arthur. Instead of relief at the rolling of the ending credits, I felt cheated. We should have seen a new telling of the King Arthur that could have been, the knight that united Britannia and laid the cornerstone for a nation. We didn’t get that, even with the valiant efforts of the Knights of the Round Table and ?Guinevere, Warrior Princess?. Instead, King Arthur loses its way in its quest for the top slot at the box office. The film was a nice idea, though. A really nice idea?

?but then again, so was Camelot, and look at how that turned out.

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