King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
Directed by: Guy Ritchie
Written by: Joby Harold and Guy Ritchie & Lionel Wigram
Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Jude Law, Djimon Hounsou, Eric Bana, Aiden Gillen, Freddie Fox, Craig McGinlay, Tom Wu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Neil Maskell, Annabelle Wallis, Bleu Landau, Peter Ferdinando, Michael McElhatton, David Beckham
Action/Adventure/Drama - 126 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 9 May 2017
Written by: Joby Harold and Guy Ritchie & Lionel Wigram
Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Jude Law, Djimon Hounsou, Eric Bana, Aiden Gillen, Freddie Fox, Craig McGinlay, Tom Wu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Neil Maskell, Annabelle Wallis, Bleu Landau, Peter Ferdinando, Michael McElhatton, David Beckham
Action/Adventure/Drama - 126 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 9 May 2017
Tackling the King Arthur legend continues a trend for director Guy Ritchie as he creates another film dedicated to pop culture past. Moving on from his quirky and recognizable action comedies from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) through RocknRolla (2008), Ritchie wowed us with a Sherlock Holmes enjoyed through a new lens and most recently shifted the 1960s Cold War TV series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., onto the big screen much to my delight. Ritchie’s origin story of the 5th-century Celt contains what feels like his obligatory dialogue and editing trademarks but settles into an average Hollywood swashbuckler with some slight nods to current affairs regarding guerrilla warfare and street riots against the system. It also moves to a fantastic score sometimes more engaging than the action on screen.
Evil King Vortigern (Jude Law, Spy) is the man behind Camelot’s iron-fisted despotic government. Chasing even more mystical powers which may one day destroy the very lands he taxes and tortures, medieval Londinium is ripe for a Robin Hood figure to emerge, challenge the corrupt, and re-introduce light into lands plagued by darkness. Our hero is Arthur (Charlie Hunnam, The Lost City of Z), a cunning and petty small time crook who does not remember being born the son of the king whom Vortigern overthrew. Rescued by the local brothel with a heart of gold after floating Moses-style down the Thames, Arthur grew up rough on the streets where he learned to fend for himself, fight, and have a good time while doing it.
Evil King Vortigern (Jude Law, Spy) is the man behind Camelot’s iron-fisted despotic government. Chasing even more mystical powers which may one day destroy the very lands he taxes and tortures, medieval Londinium is ripe for a Robin Hood figure to emerge, challenge the corrupt, and re-introduce light into lands plagued by darkness. Our hero is Arthur (Charlie Hunnam, The Lost City of Z), a cunning and petty small time crook who does not remember being born the son of the king whom Vortigern overthrew. Rescued by the local brothel with a heart of gold after floating Moses-style down the Thames, Arthur grew up rough on the streets where he learned to fend for himself, fight, and have a good time while doing it.
What Star Wars calls The Force, but we’ll refer to as Divine Providence here, appreciates balance in the world. Therefore, to ensure someone out there is given the opportunity to challenge the evil king, the magical sword Excalibur stuck firm in stone reveals itself when the sea water submerging it drains itself and moves elsewhere. Appreciating the allusion to Disney’s The Sword in the Stone (1963), I, probably with the rest of theater, was on the lookout for Merlin. For, one cannot have an Arthur without a Merlin. Alas, we see the mage’s back once in flashback as he creates Excalibur, but we may need to wait for one of King Arthur’s rumored five sequels to see him; that is, if Legend of the Sword meets the requisite financial threshold.
Do not despair though, Ritchie gives us a mage in a character called The Mage (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey). Mages in this particular Arthurian world cannot conjure weapons out of thin air nor flail their arms about moving man and machine telekinetically. What they can do is stare intently forward, change their eye color, and take over the movements of animals. Our mage operates a hawk, a murder of crows, and some venomous snakes which do not seem to be native to where our story is set. By the way, if you are squeamish at snakes and are not too fond of castle-sized reptilian behemoths, you may not enjoy certain scenes coming your way.
Back to the setting, the King Arthur production took full advantage of the Scottish Highlands, and in particular the Isle of Skye, to show human-dwarfing terrain. Man had not yet conquered nature back in the 400s so watching our protagonists take forever to get anywhere is the right dose of historical reality from Ritchie. I also may be reading into a bit too far, but there are more than subtle hints to 21st century societal issues peaking their heads above sea level here. To get Vortigern’s attention and frustrate his attempts to build an evil mage tower, Arthur and his Merry Men engage in a calculated series of guerrilla warfare ambushes interdicting vulnerable supply lines and land and maritime lines of communication. After the public got their first sample of the "born king" and glimpsed a possible future out from under Vortigern’s clutches, they protest against shielded and canine-wielding riot police.
I believe these winks are deliberate, but at least they’re brief and scattered. What stands out like a stone in your shoe is an early scene of Arthur explaining himself to a cop in pure Guy Ritchie fashion. Arthur and gang crack wise, sling around slang full of witty puns, weave together flashback and the current explanatory scene to tell us what happened just a bit ago. We saw Ritchie expertly pull this off in Snatch (2000). It was not a gimmick in Snatch, that’s just how that film’s narrative was put together. In King Arthur, Ritchie only employs the technique once and it comes off obligatory, as if he had to do it, threw it in early to get it out of the way, and then switched back to standard direction. I laud Guy Ritchie’s idiosyncrasies as much as the next fan, but this scene is so out of place Brad Pitt could have walked in the room spouting off about dogs and caravans and nobody would have blinked.
Also not in the history books, the Celtic regions of what today is Great Britain were quite diverse according to this film. Djimon Hounsou (The Legend of Tarzan) shows up as a rogue leader waiting to serve whomever pulls that sword from the stone and a fu-manchu sporting Asian named George (Tom Wu, Skyfall) runs the local outdoor gym where men practice with swords and more trendy UFC takedown moves. None of this distracted me from enjoying an entertaining, but silly, action film, but I’m a Guy Ritchie fan from before the film started. I believe all Guy Ritchie fans will at least nod along in amusement with what they’re seeing. The uninitiated or more unforgiving Guy Ritchie audiences will be far harsher to the reimagining of a story already reimagined more times than Charlie Hunnam takes off his shirt in this movie. However, one game we can all play is spot David Beckham when he makes his cameo appearance.
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