Review of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) by Kaptenvideo — 14 May 2017

Guy Ritchie… oh man. He used to be my hero. I loved his two first works – crime comedies „Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels“ (1998) and „Snatch.“ (2000) which I still name as my favorite movie of all time.

Number of (indie) filmmakers have tried to capture his approach ever since – colorful, funny and full of energy, partially thanks to inventive use of modern dance music and snappy editing – but no one has come quite close.

Neither has Ritchie himself, actually. He lost his spark when his right hand man left to become a famous Hollywood director of his own. There’s an old rumor that producer Matthew Vaughn was actually the man behind most of the good **** in Ritchie’s early movies, and following their later careers, it’s actually easy to believe that.

Anyway, since 2009 Ritchie has had luck to reinvent himself as the man who makes big-budget modern versions of loved old heroes, so we’ve had two „Sherlock Holmes’es“ with Robert Downey Jr., a spy story „The Man from U.N.C.L.E.“ and now, „King Arthur“.

Ritchie has pitched „King Arthur“ as „Snatch.“ meets Tolkien but in reality we get something looking like „Game of Thrones“, only without interesting characters, story or even dialogue.

The pathetic excuse for a story used here is mostly for stitching the action scenes together and for the last maybe 45 minutes, they just give up, going for the overdose of generic fantasy cliches instead.

The result feels surprisingly similar to many recent superhero movies: looks good, is entertaining in short dosages, and gets progressively more tiresome during the last hour – except for the fanboys, maybe.

"King Arthur" is actually the first of planned six movies. Here's hope that critics are proven right and this will tank at the box office, so we can get something new instead. IMDb hints that Ritchie is thinking about live-action "Aladdin" and "Holmes 3" next.

So... "King Arthur" looks good visually and I wanted to like it. Sadly, there is just not enough movie here for 126 minutes.

At least the actors did what they could with the shallow material and Charlie Hunnam as the future king is suitably rugged and furious – think Chris Hemsworth in the first „Thor“. But this is not enough for serious contender.