The latest grand epic film arrived in theaters yesterday. This time we get a re-telling of the legend of King Arthur. This time, stripping away the legendary aspects and attempting to portray it as a more reality based story. This means, no magic from Merlin and no Lady of the Lake giving Arthur Excalibur. Actually, this is barely even a mention of Excalibur in this movie.
The good is that it is not quite as absurd as the real story of Troy was in the movie of the same name earlier this year. This time the actors all look and act the parts. Also there is a noticeable lack of CG, there is CG in the movie, but you aren't going to see huge armies of people doing battle here, and that's a good thing.
Clive Owen portrays Arthur, a man conflicted by his allegiance to Rome and his duty to his men. Owen has good presence as our lead, but I found his voice a little muddy sounding, kind of like he had some marbles in his mouth. The other knights, Lancelot, Galahad, Gawain, etc., all seemed just like who you see in other movies of this type, nothing really stood out. They did try to modernize Lancelot, giving him two swords, I guess that would be the equivalent of the modern action hero with to guns blazing. Keira Knightly is stunning and muddy as Guinevere, not portraying the usual damsel in distress that you would expect, more Xena than Lois Lane. They also didn't play up the love triangle between her, Arthur, and Lancelot, save for some meaningful glances.
A problem I had was separating the good guys and bad guys. The good guys are obviously Arthur and his crew, but then there are the Saxons and the Woads. A lot of the Saxons and Woads looked similar, so I could not always pick out which ones we were seeing, except for the occasional subtitle. Later on the distinction is made, but it isn't made clear soon enough.
There were some decent battle scenes, with a surprising lack of blood. Then I realized that this is a PG-13 movie, we can't show the limbs getting cut off. This hurt the film, it took away from the realism of the fights. What was nice though was the lack of CG hordes.
In the end, it is a decent epic, better than Troy, but below Gladiator and Braveheart, in terms of recent epics. Decent acting from the main players. Some silly dialogue, and unexplained character moves. What this movie needed was more heart, there wasn't enough genuine feeling in the film.
A last word on epics. I think that the Lord of the Rings trilogy has ruined large scale epics, at least in the short term. The scale and beauty of those films will be hard to match with what is already in our minds.
MILD RECOMMENDATION.
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