Review: King Arthur Legend Of The Sword Is The Video Game You Never Knew You Wanted
- May 19, 2017
- 2 min read
I don't like Guy Ritchie. Snatch, Lock Stock, Sherlock Holmes, you name it. I don't like the style, the writing, the repeated use of the same actors. King Arthur on the other hand, I had fun with this one.
It's King Arthur so if you don't know what it's all about well, there's plenty about that elsewhere. There's a sword embedded in a stone, a young man who doesn't know his destiny and an evil king who wants to claim the blade for himself. There's more to it than that but going any deeper could ruin some of the more enjoyable twists and turns.
Legend Of The Sword is something of a mixed bad. Ritchie's modern dialogue doesn't mesh well with medieval setting. The CG ranges from solid to Matrix circa 2002. Characters are entirely forgettable but have memorable moments. There are only two parts of the film as a whole that stood out as being entirely good. For one, the music is spot on. It's epic, similar in scale to The Lord Of The Rings. The other is Jude Law's villain, Vortigern. He manages to pull off both the vile and hated ruler as well as, on occasion, the sympathetic evil.
The action is solid as while and while it often fluctuates between actual, onscreen content and what amounts to mid 2000's video game cutscenes, it's pretty fun to watch. It often felt like I should have been playing instead of watching and, I for one, see the potential for a pretty spectacular game adaption. Nothing's perfect but sometimes it just works.
That pretty much sums up the movie as a whole, it's flawed, deeply so, but you won't care. When giant elephants destroy castles and Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) does battle with entire armies, the film is at it's best and when it slows down you'll know that scythe wielding death knights and abnormally large reptiles are just around the corner. There are far worse ways to spend a couple of hours, provided you aren't expecting Shakespeare.
Comments