King Arthur (2004)

i must have seen a different film!!

A different way of telling a story

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

(Flash Review)The director amazed me….he managed to squander a massively stellar cast with the pathetic execution of a big budget movie. From the first few scenes, there were blatant lighting continuity problems with different lighting tones, contrast level and intensities. During some big battles with camera angled up, to accentuate battle drama, there was a mix of smoke and heavy clouds and then some shots it was just partially cloudy with blue sky. That lack of quality ran into the script as well with cliché moment after cliché moment which muted any impact the music score had on eliciting emotions from the audience. Onto the plot, King Arthur and his loyal knights are deceived and forced into one last mission to officially receive their freedom papers from the Roman Empire. Will they follow through? If so, how many will survive the final mission? Another abrupt moment was when Keira Knightley's character is rescued from a dungeon and later she unexpectedly goes from being shackled to a highly skilled tribal warrior. Avoid at all costs!

If there is any historical truth to the legend of king Arthur, it probably originates a romano-British warlord fighting the Saxons. Then we have to accept the centuries of exaggerations, mixing with other legends, re-writes to fit the times and so on. This is a still living tradition, because we continue to re-purpose and retell the story. Excalibur, for all it's faults, managed to get this point across pretty well. What the filmmakers set out to do here is to try to relocate de- myth the story and try to tell what might have actually happened. To bad they did not do that.Instead we get an absurd and confused "historical" mess. Very well, at least it's sometimes necessary to salt history for the sake of a good story? Right? I mean, the cast is great. We have Clive Owen, Stellan Skarsgård, Hugh Dancy, Ray Winstone, Joel Edgerton, Ray Winstone, Keira Knightley, Til Schweiger and Mad Mads Mikkelsen. What could go wrong? A lot. Sadly, these actor's has to work with a frightfully dull script. Clive Owen only has to stand around and hold speeches. Everybody keeps talking about what a great leader and warrior he is. He has no faults, makes no mistakes. He's just a flat character. Skarsgård walks around sounding like he just woke up and is bored by everything. The character of Cerdic comes off as a stupid evil character. Schweiger just snarls and glares. These villains are generic and duller than carpenter's thumb. As a supposedly historical film, it baffle one that the Saxon land in Scotland, north of Hadrian's Wall. Why? It's far from the closest part of the Saxon homeland and just plain dumb. An why are the woads/picts/(scotsmen?) fight the heavily armored Saxons wearing leather bras? How is that a sustainable means of protection? Why are the Saxons not shooting back at the heroes when they are fired upon. They do have crossbows.The cheesy music keeps pumping over the film, and is little more than noise in the background. It sounds like any other Hans Zimmer score. I could not tell which film it was from if I heard it on it's own. Through the cinematography is pretty competently done. And through many of the costumes are pretty unhistorical, they look pretty good for the most part. I liked Ray Winstone, even through gobbled the scenery I enjoyed him. At least he put some personality into his performance. This is a dull, dull, dull and generic "retelling" of the story. Every other decade there is another Arthur-movie. Let's hope we get a better one. The characters are flat and dull, the story is unimpressive and boring, the music is forgettable and the script is dumb.

There are many types of filmgoers. There are those choosing the cinema as a safe bet for a date, to film buffs who just enjoy everything about the movie experience. My least favorite people are the avant garde psudo-sophisticates who drain the life out of everything like some vampire of joy. They don't like certain films because it makes them feel superior to say so. These are the same viewers who feel the need to prove just how smart they are by posting flaming reviews. Asshats often feel obliged to set fire to the actors, plot, music, or in the case of King Arthur historical inaccuracies. Then these self-appointed grand marshals of film post their bile on line. If you look at their reviews their hate extends to movies you probably liked. I suppose indie films are more to their liking because only someone who trashes mainstream movies can run with this crowd.It would be difficult to tell the actual story of Arthur because that individual, if such a person existed, is lost in antiquity. This film just has a different take on a legendary character. There are references to actual historical figures, but is it necessary to have the dates just right to move the story along? Probably not, unless you are a Middle Age historian. If Merlin had appeared in a Land Rover there would be room for complaint. I don't recall anyone complaining about Tarantino's history butchering Inglorious Bastards.Merlin turns out to be a leader of people more closely resembling Picts than Britons but the key take away is that he is not the mythical wizard many people expect. This Merlin is more like a mystical druid. At first I was not crazy about this character but I appreciated the fresh take of dispensing with magic altogether.Guinevere and Lancelot have a different chemistry than the myth. The Knights of the Round Table definitely have a band of brothers vibe going on because Arthur is just one of the boys. I thought it was a nice touch that the true Romans had Italian accents and the invading Saxons had German and Swedish accents.Clive Owen's performance was called wooden but he used the same style of acting in Sin City. I liked him in both roles. Owen strikes a noble figure as King Arthur. As a leader, it is obvious why he commands the loyalty of his fellow knights.This is Antoine Fuqua's first venture into a historically driven epic. Fuqua did an amazing job. I am only sorry that more people did not appreciate his treatment of subject matter or the characters. The film overall was worth the admission. The visuals are excellent. The locations are eye catching and the frenzied battles are well choreographed. It is a movie worth watching more than once. If it's the job of film and actors to entertain, then this movie delivers. Those who say it was the worst movie they ever saw better be careful in the rain, they may drown with their noses turned up so far.

Due to the average IMDb rating and Metascore, I sit down with low expectations to watch Antoine Fuqua's 2004 movie, King Arthur. If you can do, watch the director's cut, because it is much better than the theatrical cut, such as in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. There are a lot of advantages and maybe just one, but a huge mistake of this movie. The cast is excellent. Although I personally don't like Clive Owen, but he was really good in this film, such as the supporting actors, like Keira Knightley, Ioan Groffud, Joel Edgerton, Ray Stevenson and the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen. The music is amazing. Hans Zimmer is definitely the best composer of nowadays. The visual effects are also great. Antoine Fuqua has a quite unique directing style, but it's really matches with the story and visual style of this film. The only huge mistake of King Arthur is it's story. There are huge plot holes, which makes the characters and the battles unentertaining and useless. If the story would be just acceptable, than this film would be nearly as good as great historical movies of the 21st century, such as Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven or Wolfgang Petersen's Troy. The Director's Cut is definitely worth a watch, but sit down with low expectations, and don't except a Christopher Nolan movie-type story.7/10