KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD 2017
31%
Directed by Guy Ritchie
Written by Joby Harold, Guy Ritchie, Lionel Wigram
Starring Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, Eric Bana
Synopsis
King Arthur gets dumped in mud in this Guy Ritchie take on the legend that recasts the hero as a rough tumblin’ brawler with street smarts and snarky dialogue and works all the other plot obligations of the story.
Why We Love It
There’s no Euro classic Guy Ritchie has ever encountered that he couldn’t hooliganize for modern audiences, from Sherlock Holmes to, um, Swept Away. Here, the director takes the same iconoclastic method to Arthurian legend. The result? Somewhere between Sherlock Holmes and, um, Swept Away. Gone are Lancelot and Guinevere; instead, here’s Back Lack, Goosefat, and Chinese George. Out are reverence and notions of chivalry; in are brothel scraps, a menagerie of CG animals and monsters, and dialogue delivered with today’s no-respectin’ punch. David Beckham is there when Arthur pulls the sword out of the stone. It’s nothing you would expect out of a movie called King Arthur. And that’s a good thing if you thought the tale went stale centuries ago.
Not to be overshadowed by any legend besides his own, Ritchie declines to modify any of his crisply gritty filmmaking to respect a sixth-century story and instead makes his Guyest (!) Ritchiest (!) movie yet. It’s got the trademarks: tough dudes and minimal women, accents everywhere, fast-forward and slow-motion action, those SnorriCam shots where the camera is rigged to the actor and the background becomes a jittery blur, and like, three instances of that thing Ritchie does where the characters stand in a circle explaining a plan with flashbacks and flashforwards and sideways talk.
Ritchie adds legitimate visual flair to epic fantasy action, the camera frequently swooping out for clear panoramas of battle, before crashing in to see up-close swords, arrows, and magical fire clash in intimate mayhem. If your main source of Arthur lore is the nineties miniseries Merlin, you’ll recognize Vortigen, who’s been promoted to main baddie with slither and sneer as given by Jude Law. And then there’s Daniel Pemberton’s pulverizing musical score, pounding away like it wants to wake up the Dark Ages.
A ye olde epic with vertiginous cameras swooping through computer-generated landscapes with a blatty soundtrack and modern attitude? Some critics (okay, perhaps a majority) would thumb their nose at it. For others (okay, just us), here’s a movie that tears a page from history, rolls it, and lights up. We dig it.