King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword

The marriage of Guy Ritchie and the fantasy genre should be like chalk and cheese; but ‘genre’ Directors stretching the reaches of their comfort zone can work (the Coen Brothers dabbling in romantic comedy certainly worked out.)

Ritchie has already got his eye in somewhat; his last wade into literary waters yielding the rather underappreciated Sherlock Holmes movies, but trying again to produce something set pre-modern world seems to be something a lot of people are writing him off for.

I, too, would love to see Ritchie firmly back in ‘gangster’ territory but think that he should be applauded for continuing down the Blockbuster path and striving to reach beyond his legacy (not many can claim to have such a strong opening salvo in their repertoire than Lock, Stock... and Snatch.)

With that in mind, he’s decided to sign onto a six-picture deal (let’s see how long that lasts!) and yet another 'shared universe' [groan] beginning with King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword. Bizarre, considering there’s certainly another Holmes movie in him and, surely, a sequel to the fantastic The Man From U.N.C.L.E. adaptation should be on his mind but he’s dragged Jude Law over from the former to tell the origin story of the famous knight and his escapades with the sword in the stone.

First off, it’s not as good as Sherlock Holmes and also not as good as Monty Python’s portrayal of the character (not that it’s in the same ballpark, of course.) The fact that you’ll probably have to discuss whether it beats Disney’s The Sword In The Stone gives some evidence as to where it sits cinematically but it’s a pretty good spectacle and leaves you certainly not sickened by the fact that a sequel is inevitable.

We begin fantastically with a Lord Of The Rings-esque war scene starring HUGE elephants and armies battling on castle walls. We’re told it’s a battle between the mystical Mages and mankind but, just as you’re settling in, it all ends abruptly thanks to the brilliantly vague powers of Arthur’s father Uther and our friend Excalibur (damn those unexplained powers.)

Even more bizarrely Uther (an underused Eric Bana) then decides to flee before being killed off by evil Uncle Vortigern (a villainous, but hardly imposing, Jude Law) which leads us into our title sequence; a classic Ritchie montage spliced to a slightly remixed medieval soundtrack. Settling on Charlie Hunnam’s Arthur (probably the best thing about the film) we get another fantastic Ritchie vignette (a story shown being told and happening at the same time) before, all of a sudden, all proceedings come to a halt and we plod through a good hours’ worth of exposition, nonsensical bits, training-like bits and characters with stupid, unmemorable names.

It’s just a little bit, whisper it, dull and no amount of charisma, geezer dialogue or David Beckham cameos (yes, you can tell it’s him, yes, it’s slightly odd and detracts from a rather important scene but, no, he doesn’t ruin the entire film) can drag it out the mire.

We eventually come to our conclusion and a pretty nice final battle before Arthur, predictably, is pronounced as King. There’s some nice fight scenes, the scripting is pretty good (even if some scenes just make no sense at all) but it’s not quite as grand as everyone involved would like it to be.

Good performances abound but someone should probably have a word with Ritchie about his portrayal of female characters; it’s something he really needs to be pulled up on and more than detracts from this film.

Not as good as it could have been but, equally, not as bad as it could have been either. Geezer King Arthur will get his sequel, let’s see if Ritchie can pull proverbial sword from stone in the next one.

3 stars ***