Clive Owen in King Arthur Photo © Copyright Touchstone

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Conscripts

+ another review by Jesse Hassenger

Tops among the numerous absurdities in King Arthur is Keira Knightley's appearance in what might best be described as elfin gear. Her route to this particular appearance, coinciding with a tremendous battlefield climax, where she shoots her arrows -- both plain and fiery -- alongside a large company of similarly garbed and armed fellow insurgents.

As the about-to-be Queen Guinevere, Knightley is a resolute and gallant lass, just one revisionist element in this Jerry Bruckeheimerized version of the Knights of the Round Table. Opening with an epigraph that explains it draws from "new" information concerning Arthur, that is, "the untold true story that inspired the legend," the movie proceeds to trample all over previous Hollywood and traditional-legend incarnations, turning everyone into an action hero -- including lovely Guinevere, whom Arthur finds inside a walled up dungeon, where she's been "tortured with machines" and is now tended by twitchy monks who eagerly await her death, as some vague judgment on her sinfulness.

Arthur (mournful Clive Owen) has a soft spot for abuse victims. You know this from narration by Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd) (which ends up not making much sense, given his own fate in this saga): the knights are all conscripts, picked up as children and trained to fight in support of Rome's imperialist land-grabbing. Some 15 years later, in 452 AD, as opposed to the usually cited medieval times, the renowned Sarmatian warriors are eagerly anticipating their promised freedom, when sniffy Italian Bishop Germanius (Ivano Marescotti) comes up with one more indentured task, namely, fetch the Pope's favorite nephew, Alecto (Lorenzo De Angelis), from his home in the Saxon-besieged North, beyond Hadrian's Wall.

The pagan knights -- including lackluster Lancelot, boisterous Bors (Ray Winstone), dull Gawain (Joel Edgerton), duller Galahad (Hugh Dancy), and Tristan (Mads Mikkelson), who travels with a mysterious and, to all appearances, useless hawk -- resist this stop-loss tactic. Their distrust is exacerbated by their perception that the Christian-inclined Arthur is selling them out for a God who doesn't look after them. Worse, the empire is in fact cutting and running, leaving Britain (the "land" to which the knights have dedicated their violent services) to the Saxons. Skeptical at first, the knights eventually accept Arthur's self-admittedly schizzy allegiances, to his British heritage as well as the Romans (his "other" name is Arturius, and that sword of his, Excalibur, is a family heirloom rather than supernatural implement). They're mates, after a fashion, and share with their chief a long history of combat and mayhem, all in the name of (their) freedom.

Their current enemies, the Saxons, first appear as a horde, knotty-haired and lurching about. Flames and smoke billow in the background as they rape and pillage. Even less differentiated than the decidedly uncolorful knights, the Saxons are unquestioningly devoted to their superiors, the glowering, despotic Cerdic (Stellan Skarsgård) and his ornery, out-to-prove-himself son Cynric (Til Schweiger). This absolute loyalty, shown by their Braveheartish chest-pounding and feet-stomping, might have something to do with the fact that Cerdic kills anyone who even thinks about disobeying him.

Arthur is more ambivalent about his leadership. Not a big believer in supreme privilege, whether conferred by God or some other force, he's by turns fretful (because Romans like the Bishop take their administrative rule as God-given), guilty, and philosophical. Leading his men into battle, he embodies both apprehension and that the thrill of the mêlée thing, familiar from Gladiator (written by King Arthur's David Franzoni) and the Lord of the Rings movies.

Typically staged as free-for-alls, the combat scenes are less concerned with delineating moral sides than with showing Arthur's determination. This save for the singular sensational set piece, when Cynric and company come after the knights and a suddenly perked-up Guinevere on an icy pond. Each step taken cracks the ice, with increasing tension shot from under and over. The clever visuals of this scene make the lack of cleverness in the rest of the film all the more excruciating.

The ponderous surfeit of King Arthur results from too many scenes, but also from too few ideas. That's not to say it doesn't affect a kind of politics. Arthur here is a standard liberal do-gooder, deciding that he not only needs to free the serfs he finds being abused by Alecto's tyrannical dad (including the aforementioned Guinevere), but also take them along with his knights, over difficult terrain as they are pursued by the pitiless Saxons: "Freedom is yours by rights," he announces. The other knights see the problem immediately; suddenly their potent number is encumbered by injured slowpokes. At this point, the film turns almost step-for-step into another version of Fuqua's last film, Tears of the Sun, in which a U.S. Special Ops commander (Bruce Willis), inspired by a beautiful doctor (Monica Belluci), saves a bedraggled group of Nigerian refugees.

The primary differences between these plots -- in which a hero learns humility and sacrifice from beleaguered natives -- are Arthur's survival (he is, after all, going to be king) and the girl's contributions. While the good doctor was gutsy, she was not a fighter by training or preference. Guinevere, by contrast, is remarkably fierce, almost gleeful in assault mode. For the final battle with the Saxons, she brings in her own people, a gnarly, living-off-the-land band led by scruffy non-magician Merlin (Stephen Dillane), fond of donning blue body paint and swirlies on their faces when wartime comes. (According to Bruckheimer, these woodsy folk, the Picts, fought naked in the historical fifth century.)

Guinevere does look fabulous in her outfit, which approximates the bandage-look Milla Jovavich wore in The Fifth Element (another degree of Bruce Willis), cut from animal hides. She also looks awfully vulnerable, compared to the chain-mailed, horseback-riding, sword-and-spear-carrying knights. The movie's liveliest creature, she inspires Arthur to action, half-flirting and half-competing with Lancelot for the future king's attention. Along with the Picts, she launches flaming arrows and throws herself into battle, leaping and spinning like a ninja. Right about now, I'm thinking, forget history, however convoluted. The movie I want to see is Alice meets Guinevere.