King Arthur Reviews

Don't Expect A Fantasy Film

Based on the other reviews, people seem to have gone into the cinema to see King Arthur expecting a completely different film. We know from the start that there will be no mystical elements but the other reviewers criticisms are based largely on that fact, that there are no mystical elements. If you want King Arthur and magic rent Excalibur but King Arthur is a better movie.

As far as history is concerned it is as accurate as we can expect. All the main people are involved Romans, Picts, Saxons, but let?s face it, no one alive today was alive back then so we just don?t know how close the film comes to reality.

This is a good film but anyone who has read La Morte D?Arthur and wants to see a movie based on the book needn?t look here. Anyone who has read any historical theses and knows about the Saxon invasion led by Cerdic and Cynric should rent this. Some elements of the historical theory of events have been missed out but this is, after all, a movie not a documentary.

Just free your mind of everything you know about the King Arthur legend and view this as a historical film.

Lastly don?t criticise this movie for being unrealistic and inaccurate without reading a book on the subject first.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Utter rubbish.

Honestly, this film really can just f**k off. I feel like trying to sue the filmmakers for the two hours of my life they stole.

Clive Owen, I want to like you, The Croupier was great, and you rocked as the driver in the short BMW films, but your performance in this load of old crap really highlights your inability to act. How you've just been oscar nominated for Closer is beyond me. Go get some lessons, or go be James Bond where no acting skill is necessary...

Dark Ages brought to life

The atmosphere and haunting landscapes of King Arthur are reason alone to watch this film. The uncertainty and fear of an anarchic post Roman Britain is excellently recreated. Haunting mist filled valleys and snow covered hills gives us an air of mysticism and a spooky otherworldly feel. Think Braveheart meets Lord of the Rings. Acting not great and plot a little weak but never mind...bloodcurdling Saxons, battled-hardened Sarmatian Knights and Pictish warriors provide plenty of axe-wielding action. Two hours well spent.

Never watch this movie.

This movie will make you want to punch Clive Owen repeatedly in the head while screaming 'STOP ACTING COMPLETELY RUBBISHLY, CLIVE!!'

Unwatchable

After about 20 minutes, I had a deep-seated, visceral desire to turn it off and return it unwatched. But I make the mistake of fighting off that feeling and sat through to the rather silly end. I felt like the actors cheated me out of two hours of my life, the costumes looked like costumes, and there's only so much majestic Hans Zimmer music one can stomach in a single sitting. Utterly without value.

Average film made worse by terrible acting

I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that Clive Owen's performance in this film is the worst acting I have ever seen from a professional actor. His protrayal of Arthur seems to involve him reading, sour faced, from an autocue! And this is, at best, an average film to begin with.

I am very interested in Arthurian legend, and was not in the least bit disappointed that there was no mystery or magic; it made a nice change to see how it might have actually panned out in the real world (presuming of course that magic is not real... I may be wrong!). The content of the film is not the issue, but the acting of the lead actor is. Also, the film was maybe too ambitious. It really needed to be twice as long, but by bowing to the Hollywood rule of thumb that films shouldn't exceed two hours, the characters are not developed at all. If this film was not about characters that are already well known, you would be left not knowing anything about them and their relationships at all! It seems that the scriptwriters just name dropped so that they didn't have to bother delving into the characters.

The fight scenes were fine, but nothing new (final battle stolen from Braveheart, for example).

Overall, a very average film that would be worth catching on DVD if not for the abhorrent performance of Owen.

Give it a miss.

You Lucky Man

I wasn't going to bother to write a review for this as all my view points have been adequately covered several times by other reviewers .... ( terrible,terrible acting etc )

However I came across this review:-

I can't rate this film because it's been on my selection list for months but never get's despatched!!!!

As I say ... you lucky man !

He ain't British, but...

Awesome film. Great casting of British (and Welsh!!) actors. Compulsive story line and the fight scenes were choreographed brilliantly. Has the "stamp" of Jerry Bruckheimer all over the movie. One to buy for the home collection.

This Film Made Me Wince With Embarrassment

This has to be one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. Clive Owen is dreadful in this (and I usually quite like him) and he's not the only one. The acting is terrible, although I doubt that the RSC could have done much better with such an embarrassing script. By the end of the film I can only describe my reaction as incredulous. I thought First Knight with Richard Gere and Sean Connery was a bad film, but it looks like Citizen Cane next to this one.

Desperately Disappointing

Give me a film with swords, King Arthur, Epic Quests, Battles and Beardy Geezers on horses and usually I'm anybody's.

Having tried so hard to like this film, the dissapointment of the reality of it was crushing.

Where King Arthur really fell down for me was how frequently it insulted the viewers intelligence.

example:

Upon travelling North of Hadrians Wall, the knights reach the village, where the peasant folk speak with the ubiquitous ooh-ahh West Country accents. The Saxon enemy, curiously, mostly have Scottish accents.

Escaping with said peasants (in mid-summer), the knights head east to - hmm, a massive alpine glaciated pass with frozen lake, handy for sinking the brainless Saxons ('They're firing arrows at us, I know, we'll slow down, pack together on the thin ice, and keep our shields on our backs').

Major battle - how did romans fight? Well they kept close order, relying entirely on discipline & unit cohesion. How did Saxons fight? Behind a tight shield wall. Not in this film - it's just a random melee, like in so many other dodgy 'historic' films, allowing the main characters the chance to display their samurai sword-fighting technique (see 'First Knight').

Being picky? I don't think so - these points are important in this genre - Basic Geography, Seasonal Continuity, some small nod to actual historical reality. LOTR would have been a non-starter if Frodo had headed West from the Shire to start with, met Haridrim in Rivendell, and got to Caradhras in Summertime.

It just bugged me all the way through how gobsmackingly lazy the film-makers were with this potentially brilliant wee film.