King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)

Still recycling summer movies... or more precisely "Snatch" meets "GoT" = "King Arthur"... or even more precisely that was the wishful thinking, but unfortunately was neither of the two...

When I heard that there's a new release of Camelot related stuff directed by Guy Ritchie my hopes went high. After watching the movie (or actually while watching it) I realized that the fantasy ground is not that easily mergeable with his style of directing and even worse for the screenwriting, at least compared to the ground line of a classic crime story as was "Sherlock Holmes". It just doesn't work. The context doesn't get well along with the specific short witty lines, the London ghetto feeling, the alert editing filled with short cuts and frequent flashbacks and there are also others. The story itself is ok. Arthur loses his parents at a very young age following the eternal battle for the crown and gets to be raised in a London brothel. In peace and harmony. Until he reaches the age where he can be a problem for his evil uncle (a Jude Law who doesn't seem to age ... probably the dark magic effect). The rest is more or less like a soap opera, but I don't want to give extra spoilers.

It's obviously far from the original writings, but in the end is ok as an adaptation, a quite dark one and which wants to be more settled in the real world. At least it is comparing with John Boorman's "Excalibur", which probably remains the main reference in the "knights of the round table" niche. The problem is with the mise en scene as I was saying, which is bit too chaotic and looses a lot on impact due to this. You don't get to sympathize or to hate any character. There's not enough for this. I won't get to the absurd scenes or to the fighting that bypasses the limits of a swordfighting marathon. I'll stick to my own reference.. which is not "Excalibur" (too metaphorical, completely opposed to this actually), but the TV mini-series "Merlin" starring Sam Neill. The last 10 minutes in that worth watching more than all we have here...

Rating: 2.5 out of 5