 Movie
Reviews
with Evelyn Gough
King Arthur (M)
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
 Perve value - Kiera Knightley and Clive Owen.
How's "ye olde English" history? Mine's pretty good up to a point, but start going way back into the Dark Ages and it gets a little hazy.
And that's where screenwriter David Franzoni has set this knights-in-black-leather tale, the dawning of the legend known as King Arthur.
Yep, forget all that fairytale nonsense. There's definitely no Lady of the Lake, evil witchy-poo sister or Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot love triangle in this version.
Instead you get the supposed "true story" of King Arthur, aka Lucius Artorius Castus, a half-Roman, half-British leader of a Sarmatian cavalry unit and the legendary warrior who drove the Saxons out of Britain at the Battle of Badon Hill in 470AD.
Admittedly there's a round table, but there aren't that many knights left to sit at it. After two decades of servitude to Rome there's only Arthur (Clive Owen), Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd), Bors (Ray Winstone), Gawain (Joel Edgerton), Tristan (Mads Mikkelsen), Dagonet (Ray Stevenson) and Galahad (Hugh Dancy) left. For years they've been fighting Merlin (Stephen Dillane) and his army of forest-dwelling Woads but now Rome has decided Britain is too difficult an outpost to maintain so they're out of there, abandoning the locals to the invading Saxons.
And to secure their freedom Arthur and his knights must complete one last dangerous mission: rescue a Roman family north of Hadrian's Wall.
If you enjoy a good hack and chop fest, (translation: plenty of full-on battle action) with hunky guys decked out in leather and chain mail (and what red-blooded girl doesn't?) then this movie is for you.
Yep, forget that sissy Richard Gere playing Lancelot, give me Hornblower's Ioan Gruffudd any day. The guy is sex on legs, or in this case, sex on a horse! And for the male members of the audience there's the lean and lovely Keira Knightley to perve at, playing Guinevere in as little clothing as possible. (One gripe I had with this film was the costumes - they just weren't substantial enough for the climate.)
And Clive Owen has been copping a bit of flack for not being charismatic enough to play Arthur, but I thought he did a decent enough job. The rest of the cast are also very good, in particular Stellan Skarguard as the Saxon leader Cerdic.
I was impressed too, with the cinematography. It didn't make me want to rush out and buy a plane ticket to England (it looks depressingly wet and cold, so at least I know it's accurate...), but it's certainly atmospheric. And for icy action it's hard to beat a bloody battle on a frozen lake.
I wasn't expecting great things from King Arthur so I'm happy to report I was very pleasantly surprised. If you're a fan of the King Arthur legend you might have a hard time getting your head round this version but I recommend you give it a go.
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