The film was written by David Franzoni, who wrote “Gladiator,” a film
that showed it’s possible to invest a History Channel-type topic with dramatic
urgency, without compromising its historical interest or integrity. But in
“King Arthur,” everything goes wrong. The film combines the plodding sincerity
of a Ph.D. dissertation with the brains of a high-concept Jerry Bruckheimer-
produced blockbuster (which it is), and no one benefits. Jarring notes of
comic relief and ridiculous faux feminism are thrown into a fifth century soup
pot to make thick, stinking gruel. It’s not an appetizing picture.
The true story of Britain’s King Arthur, if there ever really was such a
fellow, has been a subject for historical speculation for centuries. “King
Arthur” advances one theory. Here Arthur is Lucius Artorius Castus (Clive
Owen), an Eastern European man impressed into Roman service as a boy and sent
to police the British Isles as a Roman knight. With a group of other knights -
- including Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd), Gawain (Joel Edgerton), Galahad (Hugh
Dancy) and Bors (Ray Winstone) — he fights off local freedom fighters, such
as the Celts, a semi-savage warrior tribe led by Merlin (Stephen Dillane).
“King Arthur” picks up the story in the year 452. Arthur and his men are
at the end of their 15-year tour of duty and are looking forward to a peaceful
retirement in Rome. They are weary and jaded — and that’s how they start
the movie. Wait until they find out they have to complete one last mission in
Britain, to rescue some Romans who are about to be wiped out by Saxon hordes.
There are few things more enervating than watching weary, jaded people get
more weary and jaded over two hours of screen time, but this is the dilemma
Franzoni and director Antoine Fuqua (”Training Day”) faced when they took on
this subject. The knights have nothing to believe in. They don’t believe in
the cause they’re fighting for, and they don’t believe in the Roman Empire,
which is decadent and doomed. I suppose the filmmakers were hoping the
audience would believe in Arthur and his men, but — aside from Bors, who
has a certain macho Curly Howard quality — they’re a band of
interchangeable mopes with a bad history, steeped in gore up to their elbows.
And that goes for Arthur, too. Understandably, then, an effort was put into
making Guinevere into a live wire, but too much effort. The daughter of Merlin,
Guinevere is a warrior princess, a feral little pagan mama who starts giving
Arthur come-hither looks within minutes of being rescued from a Roman dungeon.
She may be covered in her own filth, but she’s a confident modern young woman.
Keira Knightley attacks the role of Guinevere with all the energy and
enthusiasm of an actress convinced she’s making an important feminist
statement, but if this is what feminism has become in the popular imagination,
it’s as depressing as this movie’s gray and white color palette. By turns
insolent, lustful or homicidal, driven only by anger, aggression or blood lust,
Guinevere is a woman with no inner life. If she were a man, anyone in the
audience easily would identify her as a sociopath.
At least the action scenes might have been something, but they’re routine
– except for one interesting battle over a not-so frozen lake. Even then,
Fuqua blows it by reverting to the usual shaky-camera-and-quick-cuts style of
action filming, which mistakes creating confusion for creating excitement. The
one bright spot is Stellan Skarsgard as the hairy, helmeted Saxon leader, a
mumbling barbarian who rarely speaks above a whisper and never says anything
nice. Even in this misfired drama, when he murmurs, “Burn every village, kill
everybody,” it’s scary.
– Advisory: Dark Ages violence with swords, spears, arrows.
E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.