First Knight (1995)

It is a performances centric movie

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Arthurian lore is deep with fascinating mythology that has been explored many times in many different ways. First Knight uses that lore and twists it into a romantic drama of sorts, to mostly mixed results.With the new King Arthur film just around the corner I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at some of the many adaptions of the lore that we have gotten in film and television. First Knight is an okay film if it were some random medieval story with different settings and characters, but it rarely lives up to the deep mythology it's based on.In First Knight we find Lancelot, a wanderer who's struggling to find a place in the world for his skills with a sword and with women. After Guinevere, soon-to-be bride of King Arthur, is nearly kidnapped, Lancelot steps in and saves her life. Naturally, he falls in love with Guinevere, and there you have the central plot thread of the film. Richard Gere plays Lancelot about as well as you could imagine he would. It's a similar character to that of Sean Connery's James Bond from the 60's, mostly just showing off his looks and skills, rather than doing something of significance. Of course, I bring that up because Connery plays Arthur, albeit a much, much older King Arthur than we usually get, especially considering Guinevere is around 25 years younger.A lot of the film's plot is pushed forward by the romance. Not dissimilar to Braveheart being centered around William Wallace's love for two women, First Knight is clearly a romance first and foremost. The main difference is that Braveheart chooses to have the romance inspire a remarkable story, where First Knight is solely focused on Lancelot's strive for Guinevere's heart. It's not necessarily the wrong way to tell a story with Lancelot & Arthur butting heads, but it's certainly not the most interesting one. It's hard not to fall for Richard Gere's charm as Lancelot and Julia Ormond's innocent and beautiful Guinevere, but it's far from a great medieval war film.There really isn't much war to this film anyway. The main conflict comes by way of Prince Malagant, someone from Arthur's side who went Rogue for reasons that typically influence someone to go Rogue, power, greed, among other things. These battle sequences are trivial at best, even when they try to be big and bold. It all just seems silly in the end. I think to sum it up best is to say that King Arthur doesn't use his sword, not once.+Solid romance-But there's no reason to have that swallow the story-Silly5.4/10

After seeing this, I wondered why I did? This kind of touches on the real love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere but fakes it away from reality and tries to glorify the death of King Arthur in a battle that never took place. Easily the best quality in this movie is Julia Ormund as Guinevere. She is poised, attractive and hot. Those brown eyes sparkle. She looks as good on a horse as any woman ever has.The problems are - Richard Gere, who looks wooden as Lancelot and acts like a piece of pine wood for much of the movie. His action scenes are poorly done as well. Overall, this one is just Gere being cast in the wrong role. He should have been the court jester.Sean Connery - he is too old to play Arthur and while he speaks well, it is hard to believe a young Guinevere would want to marry a man who is her father's age. The only way I would recommend watching this one is if did a nudist version as Julia Ormund would look great in the buff when she did this one. It is overblown, and the final scene with the salute to the dead King Arthur was already done, when Spock died in one of the Star Trek movies. The good of the many outweighs the needs of the few. Few viewers will need this movie.

one of easy to criticize films . or easy to admire. in fact, a decent work with few admirable sparkles. the first - Sir John Gielgud as Oswald. a small role who preserves entire gentle force of a great legendary actor. than, Sean Connery as Arthur, remembering his old Robin Hood. same measure, same delicacy to explore the nuances, same beautiful acting. only problem could be Richard Gere as Lancelot. sure, he is far to be the most inspired choice. but it is fair to recognize and appreciate his good intentions, work and not so bad result. Ben Cross uses his old tricks to do a real credible bad guy. the effort has not the best result but the imagination of the viewer put the lost pieces in the right place. romanticism, fight scenes, few innovation to the legend. short, a decent film.

There were three medieval/British Isle films released in 1995 -- "Braveheart," "Rob Roy" and "First Knight." Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" is certainly the most epic of the three, but I found it overrated; which isn't to say I don't like it, I just don't feel that it's as great as the hype would suggest. I liked "Rob Roy" slightly better than "Braveheart;" it's very adult-oriented, violent and grim, however.I feel the best of the three, believe it or not, was "First Knight," a believable take on the King Arthur/Camelot legend starring Sean Connery as Arthur, Richard Gere as Lancelot and Julia Ormond as Guinevere. They get tangled up in a bit of a love triangle.As I said, this is a realistic portrayal of the story so, thankfully, you won't see any of that silly magical jive with Merlin, Excalibur, etc. This explains why so many panned the film, but I don't get their beef, aren't there enough cinematic depictions of the Camelot tale for them to enjoy, like "Excalibur"? I'll put it this way, "First Knight" is to the Arthor/Lancelot legend what the film "Troy" is to the "Helen of Troy" chronicle.The film caught my fascination right away with the character of Lancelot. He is portrayed as an expert swordsman, drifter, loner and all-around lost soul. The beginning of the picture reveals something integral to understanding his character: Lancelot takes on an intimidating dude in a swordfight contest at a village he just drifted into. After Lancelot prevails, the big guy asks him for advice on how to be as skilled a swordsman as Lancelot. Lancelot tells him that he needs a couple of obvious sword-fighting skills, to which the man confidently replies, "I can do that." Then Lancelot tells him the last quality he needs: "And you must not care whether you live or die." This is a powerful scene; Gere plays the character very convincingly (in fact, if you hate Gere, this film will give you a new-found respect for him). This character-defining episode reveals HOW Lancelot is the only one able to prevail against an incredible and decidedly deadly weapons gauntlet later in the story. And, speaking of that gauntlet sequence, it's fabulous.The rest of the film is just a solid medieval/British Isle adventure, with the requisite forest scenes and all.One small criticism would be that, although I enjoyed the heroic episode wherein Lancelot rescues Guinevere in Malagant's cave fortress, its pretty implausible. But these are larger-than-life figures, right?Reviewer Craig Connell pointed out another notable aspect of the film: It stresses character nobility and even the importance of prayer."First Knight" more than satisfied my hunger for a medieval British isles flick and surprised me with the intriguing character of the suicidally brave Lancelot.If one doesn't have hang-ups regarding the absence of Merlin, Excalibur and the magical baggage that goes with 'em this is a quite entertaining film.GRADE: B