Review of King Arthur (2004) by Phil C — 30 Mar 2011

Otherwise known as "once more unto Hadrian's Wall, dear friends!". This was another film I thought of as I watched "The Eagle", although the "Gladiator" links are stronger here through Hans Zimmer's militaristic pomp-and-circumstance musical score.

it's a revisionist version of the legendary story,without Camelot, Mordred, any overt mysticism or the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot eternal triangle subplots, but with all the chivalric values of the Arthurian legends writ large. Any inconsistencies are forgiveable, it's intended more as a blood & thunder adventure than as a strictly accurate historical recreation of events: For all anyone knows, the whole story may be mythical and without ANY basis of fact or real characters interwoven within it.

Clive Owen makes a suitably square-jawed Artorius, Romano-British warrior and idealist, who's ordered to take his small band of followers on one more mission (to rescue a high born Roman family from the invading Saxons as the Roman Empire goes into decline) before they earn their freedom. Something that occured to me was that we still see the area north of The Wall as wild and savage and the south of Britain within the boundary of the empire as "civilised", one and a half millenia after Rome fell: Perhaps it's a case of film makers unwittingly staying in step with Roman propaganda.

Along the way, they liberate Keira Knightley's Guinevere - although she hardly needs their help to become a skinny Celtic version of Xena, Warrior Princess!. She introduces Arthur to Merlin, who had a hand in murdering Arthur's mother, but despite this an alliance of their respective forces is formed to fight the Saxons, who are seen as barbarians.

The battle between the two sides on a frozen lake is considerably more exciting and gritty than a similar scene in the first "Narnia" film, possibly because the makers didn't have to worry about frightening a predominantly young audience!

By the end of the film, Artorius/Arthur has severed his links to Rome and founded a new egalitarian dynasty by marrying Guinevere, so it's "happy ever after" and three cheers for the king - don't you just love it when films have such an unambiguous moral centre to them?