When my fiancée scored free tickets to an early screening of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, I was not nearly excited as you might think. Movies are my life — and writing about them is my livelihood — and what price is better than free? By all rights, I should have been ecstatic at the prospect of an early peak into the latest summer blockbusters.
The thing is, though, that for as much as I love movies, I have never loved King Arthur. I don’t know why, but the story of a medieval king risen from the working class — complete with a sorcerous mentor, a cadre of armored knights, in-fighting and heart-rending betrayal — never really clicked with me.
Maybe it’s because movies about him always focused on the swordplay rather than the sorcery. Maybe it’s because the story always ended up being about his coming-of-age, something I similarly never had the stomach for. Or maybe its because its general pop-culture ubiquity and status as a public domain character meant that every hack looking for an easy payday chose to dredge up the least interesting aspects of this overtold legend.
The only version of it I ever had any patience for was Disney’s The Sword in the Stone, and that was mostly for the colorful wizards duel between Merlin and Madam Mim. Excalibur, First Knight and even the better-than-average King Arthur never really stood a chance with me.
Even beyond this, the movie itself looked like a less than worthy effort. The trailers all looked terrible, its release was pushed back several times since last July (never a good sign) and Guy Ritchie — a man best known for his work on modern gangster films, not high fantasy — was putting the whole thing to film. I had no reason to think that it would be anything less than a terrible version of a movie I wasn’t interested in seeing in the first place.
And yet somehow, despite everything working against it, this version of King Arthur turned out alright. Better than alright, actually: it might just be my go-to Arthur movie when I’m in the mood for a little sword and sorcery.
This doesn’t mean that Legend of the Sword is a perfect, or even an especially good, movie. Originally envisioned as a multi-film epic (ala The Lord of the Rings), a lot of the film’s most promising sequences seem cut to ribbons to make up for its lost sequels. Its cast — which includes a Chinese martial arts instructor named George and Djimon Hounsou — is head-scratchingly diverse for a story about a white dude in London fighting off Vikings. It’s all strung together with a subpar script that does little to rise above its material, which it spits out with rote enthusiasm.
The one thing that makes it worth — that makes this otherwise mess of a film more than just the sum of is disheveled parts — is Guy Ritchie, who infuses the script with the same, frenetic energy that he did with Snatch and Sherlock Holmes. Bypassing the tired coming-of-age trappings entirely, the entire film plays out like a gangster flick with swords.
Arthur dresses the part, too, with posh furs and rich ornamentation, he is the spitting image of ancient London’s kingpin of crime. While the more fanciful moments lean a bit too heavy on subpar CGI, the majority of the film shrouds itself in detailed sets and lavish costumes. The anachronistic rainbow collation of knights that gather to Arthur’s side fits with the modern tone and aesthetic of the film and gives a nice shot of color to an otherwise monochrome story.
Far from a great movie, it is a more than serviceable one and probably one of the better ones to come out against Guardians of the Galaxy which, let’s face it, nobody wants to send their A-game against. In the dead weeks between major studio releases, however, this surprisingly decent action flick does the trick. It’s a better King Arthur film than we’re likely to see for quite some time, at any rate.
Rating: 3/5
Buy on BluRay: Only if you need a standby King Arthur flick
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