Is there a more well known hero in entertainment, be it
books, film, or even theater then King Arthur? I’m sure Robin Hood ranks up
there but in the end it’s the OG equality crusader and his Knights of the round
table. His fame is thanks mostly to the literary works depicting his adventures
as his film outings to date haven’t exactly been widely well received. I’m not
including myself in that, I love and have to the best of my memory always loved
everything King Arthur. I’ve watched the Clive Owen version a dozen times, love
Excalibur, hell, I even remember being enamored with a Saturday morning cartoon
in the early 90’s that re-envisioned King Arthur and his knights as a high
school football team that was transported to Camelot by Merlin…my bar isn’t
high. You know what else I’ve always loved? Guy Ritchie. I’ll admit he had a
low point in the mid-2000 “Madonna years” but the guy always hits when he’s
being himself behind the camera. With a style that should be divisive but is
universally respected Ritchie has cemented himself as THE most stylish British
director of our time. This is all a long way to saying that I’m probably in the
key demographic for this Guy Ritchie directed King Arthur movie. I wasn’t
supremely confident in what we were going to get, though I try to go into each
movie I watch without prejudice that’s not always the case. You can usually
tell from a trailer if a movie is going to, for lack of a better term, suck. By
the third trailer for this flick I started to worry, something about the cartoony
CGI that was featured gave me the same feeling I got after seeing Doomsday in a
late trailer for Batman V Superman, sometimes you CAN judge a book by its cover…just
not this time. 
The film takes a different spin on King Arthur with the heir
to Pendragon (Charlie “Jax Teller” Hunnam) being orphaned and raised on the street
by the workers of a brothel. His evil uncle and the cause for his lack of
parentage, Vortigern (Jude Law) scours the land looking for his missing nephew
after the lake surrounding Camelot drains itself revealing the sword in the
stone. His plan is to find and eliminate Arthur before he can sway the people
and take his rightful seat at the throne of Camelot. Arthur, being orphaned at
about 2, has no clue about his lineage and, after freeing the sword from the
stone, is rescued by a mage and disciple of Merlin along with a band of knights
still loyal to Uther, Arthurs fallen father. In a classic “hunted becomes the
hunter” situation Arthur and his newly found group must take the battle to
Vortigern and take back Camelot before Vortigern can complete construction on a
magic tower that amplifies his abilities and giving him the strength to become
unbeatable.
As I mentioned before my bar wasn’t exactly high for this
flick but whatever expectations I had Ritchie blew away by the 20th
minute. The flick starts out with this large scale battle between knights and
magicians with these gigantic elephants destroying everything in their
perimeter. It’s epic and tense, filled with the kind of fantasy feeling that
has been absent from movies since the 80s. The movie only delves to that
fantasy well every so often but enough that it gives everything an overarching
feel like you had when you were a kid watching something like Excalibur. The real cherry on top of
the movie is where it diverts from where you think it would go, first and foremost
this is a funny movie almost as funny as it is full of action thanks mostly to
Guy Ritchie’s mastery of machine gunned British colloquial speech and highly
stylized editing during story telling segments. Watching Arthur relay the
events of the previous night to Djimon Hounsou’s Bedivere is worth the price of
a ticket. The supporting cast is amazing, from the aforementioned Hounsou
playing his typecast role of wise mentor to Aidan Gillen (Game of Throne’s
Littlefinger) playing the opposite of the usual conniving, slimey, asshat’s he
is usually stuck with as the endearing Goosefat Bill. The group surrounding
Arthur is so good that you almost begin to get a Robin Hood and his merry men
feel throughout the picture. The real star of the show is, well…the star of the
show. Charlie Hunnam’s Arthur is unlike any portrayal we’ve seen before and is
a perfect fit for Hunnam’s cocky yet endearing natural swagger. He tends to
overact and over-emote but he seems comfortable as Arthur, natural even giving
off an obvious aurora of leadership, bravery, and all around goodness. He is
the perfect match for Ritchie’s vision of Arthur and Camelot. Should the film
do as well as it deserves to do we will be on our way to the six film saga that
has been envisioned and Hunnam will have found a way to change his career
defining role from Jax Teller to something bigger. I LOVED Sons of Anarchy but Hunnam has proved with this film that he
deserves a cinematic legacy as well as one on the small screen.
It’s not all perfect, I wasn’t wrong in my initial
assessment about the CGI. It’s not as widespread as I initially would have
guessed but there is poor CGI throughout the film. I don’t understand why CGI
today, some 25 years after it’s real start in Jurassic Park falls in one of two categories, photorealistic and
amazing or cartoonish and obviously fake. The final battle gets the worst of
this as they begin to rely way to heavily on the green screen and we end up
with a finale that seems more like a cut screen from a video game. I’m sure
Arthur purists (is there such a thing?) will be turned off by the film as well
but honestly, I think it knows where it’s heart is supposed to be. By the time
the credits role Arthur is established and feels like the King from the stories,
fair and humble, brave and noble. If anything I think Ritchie took what can ultimately
end up being a boring “boy scout” of a character and gave him enough edge to be
thoroughly enjoyable without forgetting what made him memorable. It goes
without saying that I completely recommend this flick…it’s on my top 3 of the
year so far and when it comes to pure enjoyment it sits firmly at the top.
4.5 Out of 5 Guttenbergs
