Review of King Arthur

King Arthur (2004)
Disappointing overall
9 July 2004
If you want a plot, read some of the other reviews. They cover more than enough and there's no need to repeat them.

This is probably as close to the "true" Arthur as has been portrayed in a movie to date. If you've followed any of the research into the origins of the legend of Arthur, then you might find this film mildly interesting.

To their credit, I think the main characters did a fairly good job with what they had. Unfortunately, what they had was almost nothing. I struggled for hours trying to figure out why exactly the movie just wasn't entertaining given that Clive Owen, as Arthur did an excellent job. Knightly is a talented actress, but she wasn't given much to work with. Skarsgard is also an excellent actor but again, not much of a part to work with. The dialog is incredibly weak.

The movie seemed like a really weak version of Braveheart overall. It was as if they had taken Braveheart, removed all the good dialog, weakened the battle scenes, and packaged it back up with new faces.

While it's possible you may care about Arthur and his knights, you're just not going to care about anyone else in this movie, and that's really where it fails miserably, I think. It's a shame because the "true story" of Arthur and his knights is as fascinating as the legend it spawned and better writing and direction really could have done something with it.
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