King Arthur: Legend of the Sword Review
PG-13: Sequences of Violence and Action, Some Suggestive Content, and Brief Strong Language
Warner Bros. Pictures, Weed Road Pictures, Safehouse Pictures, Ritchie/Wigram Productions, Village Roadshow Pictures
2 Hrs and 6 Minutes
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, Jude Law, Eric Bana, Annabelle Wallis, Poppy Delevingne
REVIEW: When I was young, I only saw one King Arthur movie which was Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 film starring Clive Owen and Keira Knightley. I was only six at the time and didn’t get to see it until it was put onto DVD. we didn’t own the DVD, but I do remember watching the film off of my mom’s very first computer. At the time, I thought it was pretty decent. It was stylish, epic, and well put together. I never went back to it mainly because I don’t really give a shit about King Arthur. Now enter Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur movie which solidifies my statement, “I don’t give a shit about King Arthur.”
The young Arthur runs the back streets of Londinium with his crew, unaware of his royal lineage until he draws the sword Excalibur from the stone. Instantly confronted by the sword’s influence, Arthur is forced to decide when to become involved with his power. Throwing in with the Resistance and an enigmatic young woman named Guinevere, he must learn to master the sword, face down his demons, unite the people to defeat the tyrant Vortigern — who murdered his parents and stole his crown — and become king.
THE GOOD: The only two cast members that make this film somewhat watchable are Jude Law and Aidan Gillian. With Law as the antagonistic king, he has the right amount of snarkiness and anger to make you go, “whoa lets actually trying in this.” That moment really comes when Law cuts a dude's ear and talks into it like a walkie talkie. That is just genuinely evil. And when Aidan Gillian well he's always charming in everything I see him in. He's played to be the butt of Arthurs jokes a lot, but something in his dialect just makes him automatically likable, If he was Arthur, this more would've been for more entertaining.
This has a rather diverse cast. Though this is set in medieval times, you see people of different races and skin tones. Djimon Hounsou isn't the only black guy in the movie. There's also Asian fighters that are featured as well that plays an intricate part in Arthurs growth.
THE BAD: As far as Ritchie films go, I love Sherlock Holmes, Snatch, and I admit, I love The Man From U.N.C.L.E but now I’m starting to think that Guy Ritchie may be a one trick pony. I heard of his terrible films of his past such as Revolver and Swept away which were projects he both wrote and directed. The worst Guy Ritchie film I’ve seen was Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows which honestly I thought was a decent rental. That has now been beaten by this.
LET ME TELL YOU WHY!
From the first opening shot, you will have no idea what the fuck is going on. Right after the opening shot, the film cuts to black for such a long duration of time you think something was wrong with the projection, but then it opens back up with some unnecessary text to remind you you’re indeed here watching a King Arthur flick. The movie starts off laughably bad where no words of dialogue are said for everyone just takes into awkward silences and screams while some Hobbit type music plays.
The moment before the film’s title card shows up is the most unintentionally hysterical moment I’ve seen in a movie this year. Literally, you see Arthur’s mother die and fall into the ocean. When this moment happens, the audio is silent, the movement is slow, and all you hear is her breath as she falls into the ocean. You don’t have the camera follow as she falls into the ocean. You just her go down as the camera is just empty having the ocean in the background. THEN THE TITLE CARD COMES AND BLASTS EPIC MUSIC! Just by that unnecessary shift, you are just bursting into laughter. And people, this is all under the first 10 minutes of the movie. The opening titles don't even display onscreen until 10 minutes into the movie.
James Herbert who has edited Ritchie’s work of the past from Holmes to U.N.C.L.E has finally either caved in or gave up trying to make his work decent because his editing here is atrocious. You can easily tell that Herbert just did not give a fuck. The majority of the transitional cuts are abruptly interrupted midway through a character’s sentence that it's neither never heard from again or is played overhead in the next expositional shot. But the dialogue is so muddled, you’re unable to understand what anyone is saying or whose saying anything.
You will have conversations that you’re unable to see but only to be heard.
One of the biggest problems with this movie is that it is unnecessarily over-exaggerated. I say this term because the movie is way too dramatic when it don't need to be. I know it's all for stylistic flair but as it goes on it quickly wears out its welcome as it becomes incredibly awkward. You will have the movie slow down in order to give a character a dramatic zoom especially when it has to reveal the identity of someone as if we are supposed to give a shit.
When you do stuff like this, you only make the film more dull, extensive and most of all OBNOXIOUS. If the direction wasn't so far up its own ass, I would've been so lenient on the movie. Let me give you an example of why this is overly exaggerated. It is the scene when Arthur picks up Excalibur. By the time Arthur picks up that sword, a huge part of me gave up on the film.
When Arthur lifts the sword, its supposed to be cool and glorious. That scene is ruined due to a lack of continuity. While he picks up the sword you get some epic angle shots as it should be. But out of nowhere, you get a random jump cut to a dog viciously barking. Mind you, this dog was never shown in this sequence. Not even a shot that preceded it as well. You don't even know that dogs exist in this universe until that very random shot. Because of that, you’re immediately thrown off and taken out of the movie and you shouldn’t feel that.
Thankfully one of the best scenes of the movie is when Arthur does grow to be an adult when he and his friends are interrogated. When it plays out contextually in the story, it feels it puts together more than an Edgar Wright more than a Guy Ritchie sequence. It’s similar to a sequence straight out of a heist movie and it’s a lot of fun to see. It's unfortunate to see that fun moment ruined once Ritchie goes on to REPEAT THAT SAME TRICK NEARLY 7 MORE TIMES IN THIS MOVIE! We can’t enjoy a good action sequence because Ritchie at this point is just so conceited with this style that he forgets the needs of the audience. It's so repetitious to a point I actually contemplated walking out because the sequences just became torturous. It felt like I was just watching the same sequences being played out over and over. By the fifth time this sequence is done, I just wanted to tell the movie “STOP! You’re annoying the shit out of me! It is not too late to do anything new! JUST GIVE ME A REASON TO GIVE A FUCK”
This dude was so busy making a carbon copy of Sherlock Holmes that he forgot to tie this character into the lore of King Arthur that we as an audience should give two shits about. In this movie, Arthur embodies all of the characteristics traits of Sherlock Holmes. Like Holmes, Arthur is a tremendous smart ass that is strong, skilled, and most of all, a shit talker.
It's an over two-hour movie but without the obnoxious style, it probably would've been 10 minutes shorter. The reason why the style worked in Sherlock Holmes was because hit enhanced the film’s main character as we dove into how his mind worked by how he solved cases. When you apply that style to King Arthur, it just doesn't work for obvious reason. Besides, that was the performance by Robert Downey Jr’s charm and charisma. Charlie Hunnam has NONE of that. Hunnam doesn’t have that charisma or charm for he delivers all of his lines of dialogue in one tone: deadpan. Even when he's delivering comedic lines, he’s deadpan. When he’s delivering dramatic lines, he’s deadpan. I’ve never seen him this deadpan since Pacific Rim, and I like Pacific Rim. A part of me is happier now knowing that Hunnam didn’t get to play Christian Grey as he was originally supposed to (especially since he chose to star in this instead).
There are several instances where that style is effective. Just as when Arthur accepts the sword, we get to see his backstory played out. But that effectiveness quickly runs out by over dramatization. Seriously, I was leaning towards giving this movie credit for the action, but it's ruined by stupid visuals that only featured for the sake of the 3D effect. The movie’s 3D isn't even impressive. It's one of those cases where the 3D is used as a gimmick while making the movie dark as hell.
The worst thing that agreed about the movie when walking out was knowing the fact this next film after this is Aladdin. Oh, yes that Aladdin.
Disney might as well put all of your eggs in another basket.
The only cool action element is when Arthur does his slicing and dicing with Excalibur as it exhibits pretty impressive visuals. It is not undercut by a stupid moment in the end for its actually the most genuinely cool action sequence in the movie. The bad part about this moment is that it comes at nearly the very end of the movie. Its cool, don’t get me wrong, but at that point, it's too little way too late.
Maybe if the movie added blood to the action, instead of this desensitized PG13 sit, I would've had a slightly fun time. In the age of where Game of Thrones is the most popular show on TV now due to its violence, gore, sex, and nudity: maybe you should have your medieval movie have something of those four to make it mildly amusing? Fuck this movie, go watch Game of Thrones. Shit, go watch Guillermo Del Toro’s animated series Trollhunters. It may be an animated Netflix series but it has the Lore of King Arthur that is more true to its myth while being its own thing far much better than this. Besides that, the show is consistently mature and has the right balance of humor and drama this film fails to have.
LAST STATEMENT: Obnoxious, lazily edited, and poorly put together by repetitious and unimpressive direction, Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is cinematic proof that nobody likes a one trick pony.
Rating: 1/5 | 23%
Super Scene: Excalibur Sword combo.
