King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
Want to love summer action movies again? Ignore the critics, and treat yourself to King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
Directed by Guy Ritchie – 2017
Written by Joby Harold and Guy Ritchie & Lionel Wigram
Reviewed by Melanie Hooks
Did you suffer through last year’s uneven, bloated Suicide Squad? Fall asleep during the glacially paced-though-equally-well cast Fantastic Four? Wonder why you ever wanted to spend time with the now-so-stoic-he’s-almost-mute Jason Bourne?
Some particularly virulent reviews of writer-director Guy Ritchie’s new Arthurian adventure might make you nervous that you’re in for the same here. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I saw it in a packed theater, almost of all which waited through the long credits, talking happily about what a great time they had. All I can conclude about the bad reviews? Critics and fun don’t mix.
Ritchie gives us more genuinely exciting action in his opening fifteen minutes than either of those comic book films did in their entirety, and more humorous character development than the whole Bourne franchise. Nobody else working on this scale takes chances like Ritchie does. He mixes grey-washed long scenery shots with head-spinning close-ups during a chase. We watch Charlie Hunnam’s amped up pre-fight routine as an MMA-era Arthur mixed into the real time of actual combat. Grifters with street-level accents tell and retell stories from different points of view, spinning the viewer from truth to untruth, forcing the audience to rethink and engage to guess the real deal, just as a gypsy dares a mark to keep up. Only the best storytellers can do this and make it look easy.
This film invites you along for the ride. It doesn’t aspire to verisimilitude, but neither does it pander to any lowest common denominator. No brand-friendly committee slime anywhere. You know you’re watching a smart, rebellious movie, and that’s the entire point. Like Ritchie’s style or not, and clearly I do, no yawns await you.
Ritchie wields music like a composer running an all-night rave to blow off steam, mixing speed metal with folk rock ballads, adding a wholly 21st century landscape to this tried-and-true tale. I’ve probably seen and/or read almost every incarnation of Arthurian legend available to a modern audience, including the original tiny fragments of historical record – only three exist—that allude to the actual man now known as King Arthur. And yet, Ritchie’s signature use of English thug culture and manners wipe away centuries of calcification from this retelling. The north Welsh countryside around Snowdonia National Park, the lands associated with the earliest Arthurian tales and featured here, will make your calves ache for a heather-covered mountain hike.
Of particular note is the casting of Astrid Bergès-Frisbey as The Mage. For fans of the Morgaine/ Morgana legend, Bergès-Frisbey nails it. The actress herself is of mixed Spanish/French/American heritage and her Euro-something accent adds just the right exoticism to the woman Arthur must depend on to help him win a war. Hunnam’s earthy machoism bounces off her ancient soul like a quarter in the back of a barroom. She doesn’t even countenance his childish antics, which is far more satisfying as a team dynamic than the overplayed ‘sexy banter’ of so many action films. She isn’t even the only woman in every scene, another welcome surprise, leaving one improbably with a fairly feminist aftertaste for such a classically male-oriented enterprise as the summer tentpole.
Ignore the critics,
and treat yourself
…to irreverent,
smashing good times
The plot isn’t really the point here. And of course, you know most of it already. The twist on this version is that Arthur’s uncle, the evil Vortigern, played by Jude Law, has made a pact for power with a wizardly Mordred when Arthur is just a child. Vortigern, not Mordred, is Arthur’s main enemy, and there isn’t a Guinevere or Lancelot in sight. Nor are they missed. Law seems to take the insolence from The Tudors’ Jonathan Rhys Meyers and mixes it with some of his vintage heartsick characters to create his own brand of villainy. He mourns and craves power in King Arthur as deeply as his romantic hero loves and mourns Cameron Diaz in The Holiday. He’s in the midst of a Greek-style tragedy in an Arthurian-flavored landscape and somehow becomes the emotional heart of the film. Again, far from boring.
Side note: Game of Thrones fans will find a lot to love. In addition to the outsized creatures and tombs of that world, actors Michael McElhatton (Roose Bolton) and Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger) face off again, now on opposite sides in Camelot-era England. Gillen for once gets to really throw swords, bows and arrows around. Sansa would be impressed. (Look closely, and you’ll also see Eline Powell as one of Vortigern’s Syrens, the GoT actress Bianca, who hires Arya to kill her Braavosi leading lady.) The cast diversity is also welcome, as Tom Wu (George) leads the martial arts fighters and Djimon Hounsou (Bedivere) leads Arthur’s rebellion. In fact, spoiler: more than one character of color survives to the credits, a more realistic reflection of today’s British isles than yesterday’s – but that’s really the point.
This isn’t a film whose long conversations or poignant historical realities are going to move you. But unlike almost every single summer film of 2016, this one will make you squirm in your seat, cheer for the good guys (and women), and leave you feeling alive, engaged and satisfied. Just as he has done since his indie film darling days, breathing new life into the gangster genre with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, British filmmaker Guy Ritchie takes Hollywood’s outsides and squeezes new guts into its over-thought, overwrought, summer blockbluster formula. The result – the loud, proud, popping good time that is King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.
> Playing at ArcLight Pasadena, iPic Theatres at One Colorado Pasadena, AMC Santa Anita 16, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, UA La Canada 8 and Pacific Theatres Glendale 18.
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