King Arthur - The Director's Cut (Widescreen Edition) DVD
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 Rating: - Ugh!
You too can direct a big budget disaster based upon the myths. Of course, Antoine Fuqua, director of Training Day, seems eager to show that the idea that a person can direct only what they know is true- he's a black American homeboy, and his grasp of the legends is not even slender- is true. In truth, the tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are for more entertaining and grand than the déclassé tripe of The Lord Of The Rings saga, but you would not know it in this version. Instead of romance, intrigue, honor, and magic we get `realism'- or so the director spouts over and again in his film commentary, and in the assorted extras on the DVD. But, please note the ` ' that I used around the word realism. That's because there's not a hint of it in this disaster. First off, the blood and guts fighting is laughably unreal. Ever since Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line in 1998, filmmakers have been trying to be `real' in their violence onscreen. This `realistic' movie, however, eschews that. Yet, the Knights curse and spit, especially a Cockney Sir Bors (Ray Winstone). They also are not British, nor even French. Instead, they are from Sarmatia- a region that never produced knights in the early 5th Century, when this film is set, nor were they ever at war with the Roman Empire, as claimed. In the tales, King Arthur and his Knights are devout Christians, and Rome is little seen. In the film, Arthur is a Roman Christian in service to the Pope, Lancelot is a heathen, and Merlin (Stephen Dillane) the head of a band of forest people called Wodes who, in this `realistic' film, never existed. In short, the film centers around Arthur's Knights' rescue of a would-be child church bishop north of Hadrian's Wall before the terrible Saxons sweep in from the North. Unfortunately, the Saxons never occupied northern Britain, they were defenders of the Isle from Scots, Picts, and Celts, and they were not marauding barbarians in the mold of the Vikings a half an eon later- all, again, in this `realistic' movie.
Gwynevere (played by the lovelier than words Keira Knightley -or is it Natalie Portman with an accent?) is a wild warrior woman in the Xena mold- possibly a Wode, although this is never definitively made clear- which she and Fuqua claim is historically accurate, although it's not, but allows the brief notion that the glimpses of her taut, lithe, nacreous bod (and nacreous is a word destined to describe Ms. Knightley's skin) in skimpy leather, in winter- mind you, will soon give way to a great romantic love scene with Arthur (the petrified Clive Owen). But, alas, the one brief romantic scene is lame, Keira stays far too clothed, and Lancelot (Ioan Gruffydd) is a total pussy who seems utterly impotent in the face of Gwyn's charms.... Now, none of these failings would matter in the least were the tale a damned good one, but the only way this script could have been passable on celluloid were someone like a Roger Corman brought in to camp it up. But, humor and camp are totally absent in this hermetically dry waste of time. So, the claims of `realism' and historical accuracy' are the only thing this monstrosity had going for it- along with the anticipated delight of Keira Knightly in and out of leather, yet it fails miserably on both scores. And the editing is atrocious- with at least three major discontinuities in scenes where snow is seen on the ground, them mysteriously replaced by green grass a second later. Avoid this film, burn the DVD, and read Thomas Malory. To sum up- I still look forward to the day when I can ogle Ms. Knightley's taut form in the way it entered this world, but the hopes that this film would be entertaining or even passable, well- to quote Mistah Kurtz- `He dead!'

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