Originally Reviewed
Sunday May 15, 2005
We're all familiar with the legend of King Arthur, and Antoine Fuqua's underrated version is probably quite a bit more realistic and true than those that usually deal with the magic of Excalibur and Merlin, that is of course if Arthur was ever a real person at all. I never saw the theatrical version of King Arthur, but given that it had a PG-13 rating I'm going out on a limb and guessing there wasn't as much blood, if any, compared to this unrated extended cut. The Director's Cut is made up of two large and long battles which are pretty bloody indeed, probably two of the best battle sequences I have seen in a while, but on the downside they're at the beginning and end of the film leaving the middle open to some rather boring and hollow moments.
King Arthur has almost everything a film like Troy didn't, amazing and breathtaking locations, a more well developed script, and a lot better acting and overall cast (except for the Saxons). The Saxons are the main villains who Arthur and his knights are fighting to protect the people and their land from a brutal take over, but overall the the Saxons were pretty pitiful, both looking and acting. Their leader resembled a biker you might find in a local roadside bar in the middle of nowhere with a raspy voice that was both irritating and lame, but even worse was his skinhead son who had a pony tail for a goatee and looked like something you might find in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The villains can make or break a film, and if these two characters had been cast better there would have been more of a reason to check King Arthur out.
On the positive side there's Keira Knightley who played Guinevere, portrayed as a Zena Warrior Princess type, and while watching her beat the crap out of the Saxon's was completely unrealistic, it was still enjoyable. You don't usually see the lead female character in these types of films with such a hands on role, so while it's probably far from historically accurate, it's not awful. In the end, King Arthur is no Gladiator, but it has its high points and I'm sure this Director's Cut version has more going for it than the original.
7/10
I need to give this another chance at some point, but when I first tried to watch it, I couldn't sit through I got so tired of it (too much cardboard acting charisma).
ReplyDelete@Univarn - Knightley is definitely the best in terms of acting the film has to offer. But compared to something like Troy which is beyond horrible in terms of it's acting King Arthur isn't too bad. Then again almost any film is better than Troy... so it's probably my love for Knightley that got me to enjoy this. Ironically the Troy director's cut is actually pretty decent probably about the same in terms of entertainment as this DC.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Univarn that this movie was difficult to watch due to being overly dark in visual sense, to uneventful in plot and the whole film just didn't have a direction nor a sense of purpose. But, a big BUT, the music was amazing, I adore Moya Brennan's TELL ME NOW, the main theme of the film, and I just adore BREAK THE ICE the music which covers the legendary scene when they throw arrows into frozen lake so that enemies would drown. Some of the actors were also amazing, especially the ones playing Saxons - Till Schweiger is always great and he pretty much stole the show from all of them, Mads Mikkelsen great as well, Stellan Skarsgard was impressive, Ioan Gruffudd and Hugh Dancy were also great as usually, but the two main actors were horrible - Clive Owen just didn't know what to do with his role, while Keira was plain, shallow and empty as always. If the film had some bigger and stronger actors in those two lead roles, the film might've been better.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I'm not sure why think TROY was so bad in acting. Sure, Brad Pitt, Orlando, Diane Krueger ... were horrible, but Eric Bana had a breathtaking role of Hector bringing an intelligent and charismatic performance worthy of an Oscar, Suffron Burrows was profoundly touching and mesmerizing as his tragic wife, Peter O'Toole was also amazing as always, young Rose Burne wasn't bad although she had to act in the scenes with wooden Brad Pitt. Brendan Gleeson was also very magnetic as Menelaus, while Brian Cox could teach acting classes based on his Agamemnon.
ReplyDelete@Dezmond - well I can't agree with you on the Saxon's, I thought they were the worst part of the film and the two lead Saxon's were incredibly dry and dull. Not surprised you don't like Keira, I find her wonderful in all her roles even though she's been in some stinkers.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to get my Troy review up soon. I thought I had already posted it, because I swear you and I debated on it (must have been in another review) but I guess I haven't. So I'll work on that and we can save the discussion for that time. I think I wrote that review back in 2005 as well so I need a little refreshing on it.
"Don't worry, I won't let them hurt you."
ReplyDeleteThat Knightley quote became a common thing said in my house during the buzz of it's theater release. My hubby has a Kiera love, and while I'm a fan myself, the film itself was good, but as Univarn pointed out, felt cardboard at times. The script was well written, the characters interesting, and I'm a fan of girl power, but there was passion that was greatly missing, that as you pointed out Gladiator exuded.
@Heather - your husband has good taste ;P But I can't really argue about the acting, it's pretty stale especially coming from the lead actors. Still I never said it was great, I just said the acting was better than Troy, which was overly campy in my opinion. And I used that film as a comparison because they both came out around the same time and are similar types of films.
ReplyDelete