LAST KNIGHTS

Last Knights Where is Nicolas Cage when you need him? Isn’t the combination of Clive “Elocution” Owen and Morgan “Narrator” Freeman a little too serious for a tale a band of medieval knights bent on revenge? Wouldn’t the tone be better served if Cage came galloping in and skewered someone, preferably one of the screenwriters? And just when and where does this story take place? Seems British-y, but was ancient England (or fairly long ago anywhere else) ever so multicultural as to feature Japanese, Koreans, Eastern and Western Europeans, Middle Easterners, New Zealanders (and let’s not forget Americans), all in positions of relative authority? And what of Denmark’s Aksel Hennie as bad guy Gezza Mott? Did they tell him if he played his cards right he could be the next Bond Villain, à la Mads Mikkelsen? How else to explain the lap dog, the bad haircut, the gold tooth and the overacting? Speaking of casting choices, is anyone in the audience expecting the young, idealistic apprentice Gabriel (Noah Silver) not to be hewn down during the climactic battle? Wait, can anyone even see the battle, which takes place on a moonless, cloudy night and was apparently filmed by the light of a single candle? Or did director Kazuaki Kiriya expect us to be asleep by this point, having endured almost two hours of basically watching wattle and daub dry? Is that why he made this monstrosity? Can he please not do it again? Last Knights opens April 3 in Toronto and VOD. Ω