Based upon apparently newly discovered archaeological evidence the legend of King Arthur gets a "Lord of the Rings" / "The Last Samurai" type makeover as does "Pirates of the Carribbean's" lead Kiera Knightly...

The story includes a lot of the well known features and names including the sword in the stone, the round table, Arthur, Lancalot, Guinevere etc... but it doesn't play up their importance unlike in the legends that apparently decended from this tale of action and betrayal.

Despite her dominance in reviews and posters, Knightly's part in the movie is very much less substantial than I would have expected. From the posters you could even have thought (as I had) that it was more about Guinevere.

I was impressed by the action sequences which were not played up or over hyped. I also don't recall any accompanying music during the final battles, though I could be mistaken. A fact that lead the battles, supposedly based on new evidence, to feel more realistic.

I was however surprised by the strong pagan and anti-Christian theme to the movie, with all the Christian characters taking flack for their supposed beliefs, however in a lot of cases they deserved such flack since they were not behaving in a very Christian way as was historically correct in many cases during the "dark ages".

All the characters were played ably, although at least one of the Knights would have felt right at home in Albert Square as a Mitchell brother. I actually hoped that he'd die he was so annoyingly EastEnders.

Still the film was not all that special, but neither was it bad. So a rather moderate smiley rating has to be applied... Slightly disappointing.

see also:
Inception, The Dark Knight, Casino Royale, Mission Impossible III

User rating: 3 (1 votes) [rate this movie]