Medieval tale gets director’s brand of ‘cool’
It’s bold. It’s daring. It’s a black-metal acid trip.
And Guy Ritchie’s take on the King Arthur story might give you motion sickness.
This King Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) is really into bare-knuckle boxing (see Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” and “Snatch”).
“King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” is unlike any other medieval warfare and sorcery movie ever filmed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. This superhero origin story is strange, invigorating, often outright bad, confusing and totally wild.
The film isn’t so much written as it is edited within an inch of its life. Many people assume that movies cannot tell an effecting story with rapidly edited montages alone, but “King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword” presupposes that maybe it can.
Actually, it can’t — but the effort is noble.
In the first half, Ritchie and editor James Herbert manage to nail a delicate balance in the aggressive edit. The film flashes forward, back, sideways and through time, slashing through
“King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.”
hypotheticals, plans, nightmares, memories and tall tales. By the thinnest thread, they maintain character, tone, place and time. But the film’s second half devolves into a fetid stew of muddled timelines and mushy details.
About two-thirds of the way through, at about the point where Ritchie has attached cameras to his actors’ shoulders so the audience can jog along, looking at the underside of someone’s chin as they run and jump and hurtle through space, it all becomes exhausting and disorienting.
Ritchie, Herbert and the writers try to achieve touching character moments in the second half, but that’s difficult when we barely have a grasp on the characters and what they’re doing.
That’s a shame for a story that centers on friendship and male companionship.
With no Guinevere or love triangle, Arthur is motivated only by a desire to protect his friends and loved ones, which distinguishes him from his evil uncle, King Vortigern (Jude Law), who has no problem cutting relatives down one by one when it makes him more powerful.
That focus on the relationships between men is one of Ritchie’s hallmarks. As for the women in the film, we’ve got a horde of nurturing sex workers, an unnamed Mage (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) and various, interchangeable wives, mothers, daughters, sisters.
What is clear is Directed by Guy Ritchie.
PG-13 (for sequences of violence and action, some suggestive content and brief strong language) 2:06 at the Columbus 10 at Westpointe, Crosswoods, Dublin Village 18, Easton 30, Gateway, Georgesville Square 16, Grove City 14, Lennox 24, Movies 16 Gahanna, Pickerington, Polaris 18, River Valley and Screens at the Continent theaters and the South drive-in Ritchie’s desire to retell a legend of English royalty through his adopted perspective on the world, to show a London (“Londinium” in the film) peppered with Cockney-accented con men, thieves, whores and low-lifes, no matter the century.
Unfortunately, Richie doesn’t stick the landing on “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.” Anything innovative descends into a computer-generated, monstrous melee.
The larger issue remains:
The answer: seemingly just because Ritchie thinks it’s cool.