KING Arthur gets the Guy Ritchie treatment in ‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ (2017).
Revising the Arthurian tale with a dose of the biblical, the Dickensian, ‘A Knight’s Tale’ (2001) and even ‘The Princess Bride’, (1987), the derivative retelling stays less true to legend than it does to doing whatever the hell it wants.
Starring Charlie Hunnam as the title character supported by Jude Law, Djimon Hounsou and ‘Game of Thrones” Aiden Gillen (Lord Baelish), ‘King Arthur’, while indisputably all over the place, is also kind of fun.
With Ritchie liberally mixing myths and situating the legendary king in a whorehouse, the director and co-writer begins the legend in the gutter where a young Arthur seems to run the show, protecting prostitutes and relieving Vikings of their beards.
Cut to his bravado landing him in hot water with the king, on a barge and forced to take his turn pulling a sword out of stone under the scarred eye of a global soccer star and you have some idea of how over the top the whole thing is.
Minus Merlin, Guinevere, Lancelot and Galahad but with a mage played by Astrid Berges-Frisbey who helps Arthur wield the mighty sword Excalibur, the film is strictly pre-round table.
B-grade but oddly entertaining what with Ritchie’s rock and roll and commitment to the frenetic, ‘King Arthur’ is worth a watch if you’re a fan of the legend or anything vaguely akin to it.
– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram
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