King Arthur, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Antoine Fuqua and released in 2004, is a very hard movie for me to pin down. On the one hand it's an awful film - badly written, badly shot, badly paced. On the other it's filled with odd glimmers of promise, little scenes, shots and moments that make you think maybe there was a good film in there. Somewhere. Not necessarily on screen, which is what ultimately matters, but there enough for you to understand why they tried in the first place.
The core failing of the movie is that it takes itself so damn seriously. It strenuously pushes the line - both in the publicity and the film's prologue - that this is a King Arthur movie based on
history. It's about the
real Arthur, not some silly late medieval fantasy. The problem with this is twofold: firstly, King Arthur
is a silly late medieval fantasy, and any attempt they make to tell us otherwise comes across as bald-faced lying. Secondly, if you
are going to set Arthur in the Dark Ages and pit Saxons against Romans, then you don't get to include French medieval knights like Lancelot at the same time.
There's also something odd about the way the film is shot. Much of it has that very staged, wide-angle Bruckheimer "look", the kind initiated by Tony Scott and then refined and developed by Michael Bay. The problem is that the director, Antoine Fuqua, is best known for contemporary urban action thrillers like
The Replacement Killers and
Training Day. The film feels like Fuqua is out of his depth, or simply not adapting his filmmaking style to the epic story he's supposed to be telling. Whatever the cause, the result is a film that looks curiously disjointed and empty. There's a very poor sense of geography here, and since the film is dominated by scenes of people riding horses across fairly empty moors and hillsides this creates quite a big problem.
The cast are actually pretty good. If there's one thing Jerry Bruckheimer has absolutely mastered in his many years of producing action flicks, it's the method of casting a talented actor in an underwritten role and letting them craft something exceptional out of it. Here we get Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd, Mads Mikkelsen (Le Chiffre in
Casino Royale), Joel Edgerton,
PoutyfaceKeira Knightley, Ray Stevenson (Titus Pullo in
Rome) and Hugh Dancy. As the primary villain he uses Stellan Skarsgard, who is a truly sensational actor in every film I see him in. Ray Winstone plays Bors in a performance notable for showing audiences exactly what Will Scarlet would have been like had
Robin of Sherwood lasted another 18 seasons. Stephen Dillane plays Merlin, and with his gaunt face, long straggly hair and enormous beard you can actually have a lot of fun imagining he's actually comic writer Alan Moore.
Clearly there's promise
somewhere for a movie about the King Arthur legend, but for some reason no one ever seems to pin that promise down.
Excalibur was close but critically flawed.
Camelot was pretty tedious.
First Knight was absolutely wretched. You'd think making an epic movie about English knights and mass battles with swords would be a walk in the park to write and direct, but for some reason the legend's still out there, still not quite fully exploited to the best it could be. Sooner or later someone's bound to try again. Sooner or later someone's bound to get it right.
One funny piece of trivia off of IMDB - apparently Fuqua wanted to cast Daniel Craig as Arthur, but Bruckheimer pushed for Clive Owen on the basis that Owen was clearly about to be announced as the next James Bond and the resulting publicity would be good for
King Arthur's box office.
Also of note is how in the film's one-sheet poster (above) the marketing firm tasked with preparing the art decided to Photoshop breasts onto Keira Knightley's chest. Obviously marketing firms do this all the time, but when your lead actress is fairly well known for being on the skinny side of "very slender indeed" it does become kind of obvious.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
