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(Review) King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
By Rouén Robinson
May 28, 2017 - 10:51:53 AM

 
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A retelling with no respect for legend at its source...

A young child is robbed of his birthright when his parents are killed and his uncle seizes the crown. He grows up in the back alleys of the city until he is forced to acknowledge his destiny and all the responsibility that comes with it.

Arthur is a young man raised in a brothel with no knowledge of his legacy until he pulls the sword from the stone and is forced to come to terms with the death of his father by his uncle. The Mage is a young woman with mystical powers linked to animals who was trained by Merlin and is now helping Arthur to overthrow his uncle to gain control of Camelot. Sir Bedivere is the leader of the resistance and is a former knight who served under Uther and is hesitant to work with Arthur until he has proven himself to be the rightful successor. Vortigern is the tyrannical king who sacrificed his wife to gain power to kill his brother Uther and now has his heart set on gaining control of the sword that Arthur now possesses.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is a bastardized version of the Camelot story with absolutely no heart. I am not bothered by the fact that the sword in the stone and Excalibur are two completely different swords as that is a common mistake and every telling of the lore takes liberties. What I dislike is the fact that Arthur is portrayed as a jerk with no noble qualities apart from his loyalty to a band of trouble makers. Charlie Hunnam is wasted in the role and Jude Law is not given much to do apart from look mad in each scene. Eric Bana as Uther Pendragon is the only person worth watching and he is only in the movie to remind us what we and Arthur have lost. Guy Ritchie can do so much better and if he did not let his need to show off his signature cinematic flare then maybe he could have spent more time on the script and made the characters relatable to those outside of his sphere of influence. I am not even ready to get into the anachronism of the clothing and certain tools for that time period and the unevenness when it came to the special effects from scene to scene. I understand that they were expecting to have multiple films to explain their vision, but giant animals mutated by magic is one of the things you should set the rules for in the first movie. This felt like it didn’t know what movie it wanted to be as it ripped off everything from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to He-Man & the Masters of the Universe to Disney’s The Little Mermaid to Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer series of paintings just to name a few.

I rate this a rating of 1 & 1/2 out of 5.

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See other reviews by Rouén HERE.


Rouén Robinson has been an avid moviegoer since childhood and has been critiquing motion pictures for almost a decade. He has been a film critic for The Cinemas on Tempo and was a judge for FLIFF On Location: Grand Bahama Island, an off shoot of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF). Rouén lives in Grand Bahama and can be reached at redr1976@icloud.com and on Twitter @thereelrouen



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