King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)

Review

126min

Genre:      Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Director:   Guy Ritchie

Cast:        Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey …and more

Writers:    Joby Harold, Guy Ritchie and Lionel Wigram

-Synopsis-

In a fictional and fantastical medieval England, an orphan street urchin turned talented hustler uncovers the truth about his noble family and the mystical sword which will shape his destiny—placing him on the path of vengeance and setting a collision course with a powerful and sinister King who’s hell-bent on dominating everything he surveys.

Having already put his stylistic spin on an iconic British myth with the entertaining Robert Downey Jr.-inspired re-imagining of ‘Sherlock Holmes’, director Guy Ritchie takes aim at a far more ancient one and answers the question—what happens when you take decades of fantasy film clichés and $175million worth of CGI and throw them at the Arthurian legend?

Charlie Hunnam buffs-up and stars as ‘Arthur Pendragon’ himself—raised in a brothel and formed by the bad streets of Londinium, only to discover the truth about his fallen family betrayed by the ruthless sorcerer-King (Jude Law). Now struggling to accept his destiny and control the powerful sword pulled from stone, the lad who would be king must unite his people and some new allies—led by a figure from the past (Djimon Hounsou) and a mysterious mage (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey)—to avenge his family and save the lands from being consumed by darkness.

By now we’re all familiar with the Arthurian folklore which has endured for over a thousand years, but was truly solidified in the 12th-century by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Historia Regum Britanniae’, and which has been regularly depicted in TV and film over the years. Particularly the core elements like ‘Excalibur’ being pulled from stone by the ‘king that shall be’, ‘Merlin’ and ‘Gueneviere’, the knights of the round table and ‘Camelot’, all of which this film pays plenty of lip service to—but Ritchie & co. take the mythical and fantastical angles of some versions of the legend to a new level here, creating a bizarre hybrid of a massive fantasy epic—which at times feels more like a video game than motion picture—mixed with the director’s trademark roguish charm and streetwise gab.

If you’re a fan of Ritchie’s trademark plot-explaining, cheeky comedic cockney banter from the likes of ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ and ‘Snatch’, you might be pleasantly surprised to find quite a bit of it here—although the choice to have Charlie Hunnam leading it is curious, given his previous attempts in 2005’s football hooligan flick ‘Green Street’. Nevertheless Hunnam summons all of his charisma to try and sell this as a character-focused origin story in the midst of all the fantasy mayhem, as do the rest of an ensemble cast who have very little to work with within a familiar ‘team caper’ plot, which quickly becomes out-of-place and virtually obsolete by the end.

However any effort to convincingly develop character, or half-hearted attempt at a captivating narrative are drowned out by the scale and unnecessary extravagance of the film—with the heavy application of CGI proving more of a hindrance than a storytelling aid—even rendering the big set-pieces rather tedious as the film goes on, and overwhelming many of the sword-fighting scenes with a haze of effects, making them seem like battles in a sandstorm and blurring the intricacies of the action.

Frankly it’s difficult to draw any real positives from this incarnation of the Arthurian legend. At best the frenetic and massively stylised action is entertaining in small bursts but becomes quickly monotonous, while the narrative actually proves less captivating as the film goes along—there’s a clear sense that the filmmakers where obsessed with scale and grandiosity, while cramming too many elements of the thousand year-old legend into one package.

Perhaps most disappointing though are the characters and their lack of depth, proving nowhere near memorable enough to counter-balance the action and failing to jump off the screen, even Arthur himself. Ultimately the only real star is the mythical sword and its polished design, as is the film’s production design in general and Daniel Pemberton’s pulsating score—but the disappointing result should serve as a clear call for Guy Ritchie to perhaps ditch any more epic fantasy ambitions and stick to fast-talking, highly-stylised but entertaining character pieces . . . and a street hustler or two of course.

Who knows if the thus-far disastrous box-office returns will pour cold water of the Warner Bros. plans for several Arthur sequels, but ‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ may yet prove to be the film which caused the big Hollywood studios to re-consider their reliance on IP franchises and ‘cinematic universes’ as a lower risk, higher return strategy . . . but only time will tell.

The Bottom Line . . .

With an undercooked and overambitious narrative, forgettable characters and a tsunami of digital effects which drowns out any charm or humanity, ‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ proves a British myth too far for director Guy Ritchie. This stumbling first step in a new cinematic franchise for Warner Bros. is moderately entertaining to a point but seems obsessed with scale at the expense of everything else, ultimately proving an engorging feast for the senses which distracts more than it captivates.

Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Excalibur (1981)

After Arthur pulls the sword from stone and unites the land under his reign with the help of sorcerer Merlin, deception within Camelot and dark forces in the inner sanctum threaten to tear Britain apart, as the mythical king must determine friend from foe and fight the dark forces which gather in this major studio adaptation of the Arthurian legend.

Directed by John Boorman and starring Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren and Nicol Williamson among others.

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