King Arthur

I'm pretty sure King Arthur was the first PG-13 movie I ever went to in theaters. The way I saw it, it was a movie about the King Arthur legend, it was an action movie set in the Dark Ages, and Kiera Knightley wore that leather top that didn't make any sense whatsoever but who gives a shit when you're 13. And when I saw the movie, I thought it was awesome, what 13 year old wouldn't.

But since I have heard some differing views of the film and honestly I hadn't seen it since. So when it came onto Netflix, the obvious choice was to watch it, and give you all a review letting you know if the movie held up over the years.

Apparently, historians have agreed that the Legend of King Arthur is based off of a real hero during the reign of the Roman Empire. Okay, I guess I can suspend my disbelief for a little bit and have a little bit of fun with this movie. I'm not going to pretend like any of this is actually real but, whatever, I can bend my mind to a little bit of a reimagining of the tale.

The movie begins with an age old war between the Romans and the Sarmatians. After their defeat, the Sarmatians were required to fight for the Roman empire in return for not being killed.

These knights are recruited at a young age and have a 15 year contract. I don't know if that's true or not, I don't have the patience to look it up, so I'll just go with it.

Well 15 years pass and these Sarmatian knights are led by a Roman named Artorius, or Arthur (played by Clive Owen), fighting in Brition for the Roman Empire. In his band of knights there is Lancelot (played by Ioan Gruffudd) and others all played by decent actors, many of them in their early years, like Joel Edgerton (Great Gatsby, and Zero Dark Thirty) Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale) and Ray Winstone. Something I didn't catch when I was a kid was that all the knights are Sarmatians and Pagans while Arthur is Roman and Christian. Kind of interesting, especially when they try and put in some critiques on Christianity and the Roman Empire.

But at the end of their contract, Arthur and his knights are given one last task from the Roman Empire. There's a lot of political mumbo jumbo that I most definitely did not pick up as a kid... but I'll get to that. In short, the Romans are pulling out of Brition and they need Arthur and his men to go get a kid who is important to the Catholic Church and who the Romans want to take with them as they leave Brition.

Basically, you have your Saving Private Ryan plot where the rag tag team of soldiers who are suppose to be going home but have that one last mission to end all the missions.

Who's going to die, who is going to live? Who knows?

If you take this movie on face value, of just being an action movie based on the Arthur legend... where Arthur is a Roman centurion... and not a medieval knight, this movie has the potential to be a lot of fun...

However... the biggest problem with this movie is the whole motivation for a lot of what happens. The whole "threat" is that all this time, the Roman Empire is leaving Brition and as they're leaving, the Saxons are going around taking Roman land. Its not like these two factions are at war, the Romans are leaving, as long as they get all the important people who are leaving the Brition out of Brition, they don't give two shits about what the Saxons do and frankly, neither should Arthur and his knights, especially his knights who aren't even Roman.

So when the mission is over, Arthur and his men are free of their obligation. And the Saxon army is at the gate of their little base camp. All the other Romans are getting the hell out of dodge, like they said they were going to. All of his knights are getting the hell out of dodge, like they said they were going to. The only people who are sticking around, are the indigenous tribes headed up by Merlin (played by Stephen Dillane or Stannis Baratheon). Get it, cause its Merlin, and its the Arthur Legend, they had to get him in there somewhere. But Arthur for some reason decides to stay and fight this army.

 But of course he had some reason to do this. He was defending the people in the city... well no, everyone from the city left. He was helping Merlin and his people... well no, Arthur only really had them as allies because of his new squeeze Guinevere (played by Kiera Knightly) and not much would have changed if he hadn't, they would have probably been fighting the Saxons the same way they fought the Romans.

So why did he stay?

I'm still not totally sure. Arthur has this naive idea that Rome is the shining city on the hill and then that's kind of shattered when he hears and sees the corruption that has come from Rome. You see the movie suffers from the motif a lot of historical action dramas stole from Gladiator in the 2000s in that all these historic figures believed in freedom and some sort of democracy before it was cool. Gladiator started it, this movie picked up on it, and I think it got worn out by 2010's Robin Hood. But I guess the best explanation is that Arthur suddenly thinks Rome blows and wants to live free in Brition? I don't know I'm still not totally sure what prompted this last battle. He wasn't defending Rome, he wasn't defending anybody really.

And that really hits the movie hard in the fact that Arthur isn't exactly the best character.

You have to assume that Arthur is a good man as to gain the respect of all the knights who were not Roman, so much that they are willing to follow him anywhere and do this last mission despite being royally screwed over. But they only say that Arthur is a good man, they never show it.

I mean he's obviously not a dick like the other Romans in this movie but he's just so bland and characterless. Put on top of the fact that he just sounds naive a lot of the time. He's kind of a bad version of Ned Stark from Game of Thrones. He's just this honor driven man except the fact that he has no personality whatsoever. Ned Stark had a personality and that personality worked with the fact that he was so honor driven. Arthur is just a wooden plank with inspirational good guy phrases written all over him. And it doesn't help that Clive Owen is one of the most blandest actors I've ever seen. I want to like Clive Owen. A lot of his movies, this one included, seem like they could be really good movies but end up just being. And even if they are really good, like Children of Men, Owen is the most boring part of the film.

Then you get the other characters who kind of suffer from the same problems the dwarves from The Hobbit do. They all have their quirk or weapon that defines them instead of an actual personality. Mads Mikkelsen is your Legolas of the group who is really good with the bow. Ray Winstone  and Ray Stevenson are your heavy axe wielding dudes.

Even Lancelot, who is actually suppose to be a more developed character as he is top billing has to be defined by the fact that he has two swords and not one... OOOOOO.

Oddly enough, the movie starts out with Lancelot being taken from his family to join the knights. I almost thought that this was his story and the movie would be through Lancelot's eyes, viewing the legend of King Arthur, sort of like the way the Sherlock Holmes books and movies are in many ways through the eyes of Watson instead of Sherlock himself.

But no, Lancelot is just as boring, if not more boring of a character as Arthur is. There's some sense that maybe he could go back to his family but there's no mention of them outside of the first scene. I thought Ray Winstone's character had more motivation and character than either Lancelot or Arthur because these two were boring as hell. And they want us to believe that Lancelot and Arthur are the greatest of friends but not once do they show any kind of relationship, they just say they're friends. Its kind of the same way they try and show some weird chemistry between Lancelot and Guinevere in order to point towards the legend and the relationship those to had in that. But instead the movie doesn't show us anything to say we should care about Lancelot. Therefore when he dies, (spoiler) you just kind of shrug and so does the movie because they kind of move on quickly to Arthur and Guinevere's marriage.

I'm not 100% familiar with all of Ioan Gruffudd's work, all I know is that what I have seen him in, I haven't been impressed. I think a lot of the problems here are with the script, I don't think he was awful, its just hard to get invested with a character when I don't really care about him.

And then we get to Guinevere

First things first, I know Kiera Knightly's boobs were photoshopped in the poster. I'll mention that that leather top doesn't make any sense at all.

All of that being said, Kiera Knightly actually didn't do a horrible job in this film. Like Gruffudd, I think she was handed a bad script. However, just because she didn't do a bad job doesn't mean her character makes any sense... at all.

They find Guinevere very randomly and take her along almost just as randomly. Guinevere in this story is actually a member of Merlin's indigenous tribe. In the end, she's just a way to get Merlin's tribe fighting against the Saxons. That's her only purpose, along with a really forced romance between her and Arthur and an almost nonexistent love triangle, if there even is one, between her, Arthur and Lancelot.

In short, her only purpose in this movie is to add another person to fight in the last battle and she looks hot and cool with a bow and arrow. Frankly the only reason her and Arthur get together near the end is because she says, "Fuck it, the worlds ending" (No pun intended)

The other characters worth mentioning are the bad guys, its this basically nameless Saxon (played by Stellan Skarsgard) and his son (played by Til Schweiger). I think these two actually have names but they're just your generic savage bad guys.

The main flaw in this movie is that, like Beowulf, it was trying to be something that had succeeded a year earlier. For Beowulf it was 300, for King Arthur, it was Lord of the Rings.

The best fantasy film probably ever made, and for a long time will be made, had just premiered 6 months earlier and I guess the makers of this film thought they could ride on the coattails of the sword fighting and mass army fighting that were so intense in the Lord of the Rings movies. Unfortunately, just because you rip off a movie that came out prior to your movie, that doesn't make your movie good. And this movie does that, you have your speech before war on horseback where the main character rides back and forth, you have your rains of arrows on the enemy. You have your sword play, you have your fellowship. King Arthur steals a lot, and while the action in this film is kind of fun, without that comprehensive story, interesting characters, or any inclining for the audience to really give a damn, there's not much of a point.

Is the movie down right awful... no I wouldn't say that. I think there is some good parts, the action is fun, the characters are at least fun while you're watching them, and there is a little bit of that Arthurian Legend near the end that kind of gets you pumped up, but in the end, its just not put together all that well and I think the script some of the main actors kind of bring the movie down.

I suppose you could say this movie was fun for just a throw away watch if you're into medieval battles and the Arthurian Legend, but you're not gonna get your mind blown from this film. Take from it what you will, but its kind of hard to recommend this movie beyond a kind of fun time. In a nut shell, its harmless, not good, but its not gonna be a total waste of time.

One thing I will say for the film is that I really liked the music. I remember liking it when I was a kid and I really like it now.

But those are my thoughts on King Arthur. What do you think? Did you like it? Comment and Discuss Below! Or send me a Tweet @cmhaugen24 and follow me to get updates on the blog and movie news I'll be writing on in the future.

I'll leave you with this. Monty Python everybody! Enjoy!