Review of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) by Bloopbymimi — 18 May 2017

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is, you know… an interpretation of the story of King Arthur; as in Knights of the Round Table, Merlin the Magician, etc., King Arthur. It’s one of those stories that has been told many, many times and in many ways on film, including animation, satire, fantasy/action/adventure/drama. And I totally had to go see it after I heard Sandy Kenyon’s review, which was just too sad to even be funny.

Where this film goes wrong lies with two crucial elements of this movie are just “off.”.

#1 – Director. Not that I don’t care for Guy’s work. He’s okay with me. But here he imposes his sleek, modern style of film making into this late 5th-early 6th century tale and the result is at times it works well and is charming, and at other times it’s a painfully bad fit. I use the word “imposes” because during the course of the entire movie things just feel very forced; when had his style been “infused” into the film it might have flowed more effortlessly. For example, in one scene Charlie Hunnam walks across the set with all the swag of Jax Teller and it is as if Jax Teller were playing King Arthur! No! No! No! Nobody in 5th century England was likely walking with a bop in their step; I mean it’s possible, but not probable. Little things like this made the movie laughable at times (and I’m not talking about the good kind of laughable, or the moments that were intended to be funny – and there were a few), and with just a bit more care and effort, we all could have had a better movie.

#2 – The screenplay. Guy helped co-write the screenplay, and the story felt as though it had more than a few hands on it – as if it had been a bit overwritten. This story didn’t quite know if it wanted to be historical, mystical, beautiful, comical, dramatic, tragic, epic – it was just all over the place and it did not work as all of these things at once. The balance in the story just wasn’t there. The story itself is definitely stale, having been told many times over the years, but the attempt to “freshen” the material with Ritchie’s style was a mistake, unless he was going to modernize the setting or just make the characters straight-gangster and make an R-Rated version. Now THAT would be a movie worth making and one I would be more likely to pay to see. I must say that this is the most multicultural cast of characters I have ever seen in the telling of this particular story, and I appreciated that. It is a beautiful thing to see people of color working on the big screen – BUT, it did absolutely nothing to modernized the story in any meaningful way (because the setting was still 5th century England), nor did it change the story in a way that made it more interesting or entertaining. Someone else may feel differently about it. Me personally, I don’t care if the entire cast is whatever nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or whatever, as long as the movie is good. And as far as the story itself, it may have worked on paper, and in theory I can even see where it might work, but the execution fails.

While watching Mr. Kenyon’s review he made mention of the terrible acting by David Beckham (I believe he mentions another critic claimed it is some of the worst acting he’d ever seen on film or something to that effect). But let me just say, Becks (see how I refer to David Beckham as though we’ve met…) only had two lines and they were two terribly written lines. The worst part of this movie by far for me was listening to Astrid Bergès-Frisbey as The Mage. I thought she was absolutely and tragically, terrible. This character has no presence, no energy (as she tried to be “ethereal” and came off as horror movie creepy), no emotion (yes, I understand she is The Mage, but give us something) and her accent was super-annoying. I mean, to point out one character with such a small role, just because it’s Becks and exclude this horrible, large (she is billed second on IMDB) role from criticism, is unfathomable to me. Now I’m critiquing the critic! I’m done with this movie!

What saves the movie from being a total wash out is the wardrobe (particularly the well tailored clothes on Hunnam), the cinematography/camera work, the choreography of the battle scenes, the effects, some of the acting, the jokes, and I gotta tell ya – looking at Charlie Hunnam for two hours will never a problem for me (unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong, heaven forbid, and God bless him).