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Clive Owen leads his merry men in clumsy would-be Arthurian epic King Arthur |
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Clive Owen (Arthur), Ioan Gruffudd (Lancelot), Keira
Knightley (Guinevere), Stellan Skarsgård (Cerdric), Ray Winstone (Bors), Mads
Mikkelsen (Tristan), Joel Edgerton (Gawain), Hugh Dancy (Galahad), Ray
Stevenson (Dagonet), Stephen Dillane (Merlin), Til Schweiger (Cyrnic)
The story of King Arthur has entertained generations for so
long, it’s actually a bit of a surprise that there hasn’t been a great movie
made about it. Sure there have been entertaining guilty pleasures (like my love
for the bobbins Excalibur) but there
hasn’t been a great action adventure made about the legendary king. And this
Jerry Bruckheimer actioner sure ain’t it. But it re-enforces my seemingly never-ending
appetite for distinctly poor, big-budget, epic films.
Arthur (Clive Owen) is a half-Celtic Roman cavalry officer
who commands a Sarmatian cavalry unit, serving a fixed term of service with
Rome. They help to guard Hadrian’s Wall against rebel native Britons. Before
their discharge, the knights are given one last job: go behind enemy lines to
rescue a prominent Roman citizen living beyond the wall. Once they arrive, they
find he has enslaved the local Brits – including imprisoning a young woman
named Guinevere (Keira Knightley). Knowing a Saxon invasion force lead by the
fearsome Cerdric (Stellan Skarsgård) is ravaging Britain – and that the Romans
are withdrawing from the empire – Arthur decides to lead the whole group back
to the wall and safety.
King Arthur isn’t
a terrible film, just a totally mediocre one. It’s an uninspired coupling
together of half-a-dozen other better movie: from its Dirty Dozen line-up, through its Gladiator style score (Hans Zimmer rips himself off again), to its
remix of a thousand period sword epics from Spartacus
on, mixed with its Braveheart
style design and battle scenes. It’s almost completely unoriginal from start to
finish. There is no inspiration here at all – it’s made by people who have seen
other films and based everything on that rather than wanting to make a film
themselves.
It even wraps itself up with an unseemly haste, as if all
involved knew they hadn’t nailed it
so decided the best thing to was to knock the whole thing on the head and call
it a bad job.
The film probably stumbles from the start with its claim to
present a sort of “true historical story” of King Arthur. Now I’m not one to
get hung up on historical accuracy too much – except when it’s making
extravagant claims which are just not true – but the “true story” here is
bobbins. Nothing really feels right – from the Roman politics to the idea of a
group of loaded Roman settlers setting up a huge estate deep into Scotland (I
mean what the fuck was Hadrian’s Wall for eh?). The knights bear very little
resemblance indeed to their legendary counterpoints. In fact it’s almost as if
they had a script about a brave band of Roman soldiers and just stuck the name
King Arthur on it for the name recognition (perish the thought!).
The idea of a group of seasoned, grizzled warriors isn’t a
bad one – and it works rather well here because most of the actors in these
roles are pretty good (particularly Mads Mikkelsen as a sort of Samurai
Tristan). It makes for some interesting dynamics and always some fine character
work – the best arc going to Ray Stevenson’s Dagonet as a knight who finds
something to fight for. It also contrasts rather well with Stellan Skarsgard’s
world-weary villain, who’s seen it all and finds it hard to get excited about
ravaging and pillaging anymore.
But it’s a shame that this promising set-up gets wasted.
After a good start, when we get to see all our heroes’ personalities reflected
in their fighting styles as they repel an attack on a bishop, these dynamics
quickly settle down into the usual tropes: you’ve got the joker, the cocky one,
the reluctant one who’s only out for himself… Fortunately the Director’s Cut
(which I watched) deletes the worst of Ray Winstone’s comic “banter”, but it’s
still pretty standard stuff.
The mission behind the wall then pretty much follows the
pattern you would expect: the guy they go to rescue is an unsympathetic
bastard, they find themselves protecting the weak, it’s a dangerous journey
back to safety, blah-blah-blah. Although a battle on the ice has some genuine
excitement to it, there isn’t anything new here at all. Everyone just feels
like they are going through the motions.
When the battles kick off in earnest, they are pretty well
mounted – even if they are hugely reminiscent of the opening battle of Gladiator and the low-camera, immersive
battles of Braveheart. Sure there is
a smoky immediacy about them, like a sword wielding Saving Private Ryan, but it’s still pretty much what you would
expect. The action pans out with no real surprises – our heroes and villains
even match up for the expected clashes.
Clive Owen is a fine actor, but he is manifestly wrong for
the role of a classical hero and the awe-inspiring battlefield heroics he is
called to carry out here. He’s too modern an actor, with too much of the world-weary
smoothness to him, for him to really convince as this hardened medieval
warrior. Owen’s delivery and style is so restrained he can’t bring the bombast
or elemental force the part requires. Allegedly he was cast because Bruckheimer
believed he would be the next James Bond – the actor they turned down for
Arthur? Daniel Craig…
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Nope. Sorry. |
Similarly Kiera Knightley is just as miscast. Let’s put
aside the fact that she is half Owen’s age. There is a prep school
headgirlishness to her that just doesn’t work when we are asked to buy her as
woad-covered warrior princess. She’s too strait-laced, too polite, too
sophisticated. When she does step into the full-on Boudicca look, you’ll giggle
rather than tremble. For all her exertion, she’s not convincing in the role
either.
But then that’s King
Arthur all over: trying hard but not convincing, with such a tenuous link
back to the original myth that the fact they are just using the Arthur name to
flog some more tickets is all the more obvious. Major elements of the legend
are missing – in particular the Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere love triangle is cut
down to the merest of suggestions, enough for it to be noticed but not enough
for it to feel like a real plot – and other elements (Merlin, the Sword in the
Stone, the Round Table) seem shoe-horned in for no real effect. It’s basically
just a bombastic B-movie, a sort of Gladiator
rip-off without the poetry. Moments of fun, but still not that good.
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