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King Arthur Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG-13 (intense battle sequences, a scene of sensuality, and some language) Theater release: July 07, 2004 by Touchstone Pictures Directed by: Antoine Fuqua Runtime: 2 hours 10 minutes Cast: Clive Owen (Arthur), Keira Knightley (Guinevere), Ray Winstone (Bors), Stephen Dillane (Merlin), Stellan Skarsgard (Cerdic) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

If you don't expect much from summer movies, King Arthur may not disappoint. And if that sounds like faint praise, I'm afraid it's all I can muster.

The film sets out to tell the true story behind the Arthurian legends familiar to most of us only through movies and children's books, and while its claims to history are pretty questionable, I got a kick out of seeing bits and pieces of the well-known stories juggled around and fit into an unexpected historical context.

Even though the setting is primitive-Celtic instead of shining-armor-medieval, we start spotting unusual twists on familiar stuff right away. There's Arthur—some folks call him Artorius—and half a dozen knights, some with familiar names like Galahad, Tristan, and Lancelot. Merlin name is mentioned, Arthur's sword gets called Excalibur, and eventually we even get a convincing enough rendering of the sword in the stone business. We even get a damsel-in-distress Guinevere (a feisty and fetching Keira Knightley, the best thing about the movie), and though she definitely fits the "fair maiden" bill, this warrior princess is more Lucy Lawless than Vanessa Redgrave. Kinda fun.

Plot spoiler—the big table in this film is ROUND

The idea here is that the Knights of the Round Table are Roman conscripts, the sons of fierce warriors who were the only survivors of the empire's military campaigns in Sarmatia. Think Afghan horsemen and you won't be far wrong. Nearing the end of 15 years service protecting Roman interests in the south of Britain, these boys want only their freedom. It's time to go home.

It turns out the Romans are feeling pretty much the same way. It's half past A.D. 300, and the empire is a bit overextended. After decades of fending off nasty northern natives who paint themselves strange colors (a la Braveheart) and now faced with would-be-orc Saxon hordes who've invaded the north and are bent on the destruction of everything non-Saxon, the Romans are wondering whether discretion might not be the better part of valor. Maybe it's time to head back to their Mediterranean villas.

Guinevere (Keira Knightley) and Arthur (Clive Owen)

On the day of their promised release from service, Arthur (played by a humourless Clive Owen) and his not-so-merry men are handed one last assignment: Go to the heart of enemy territory and rescue a Roman family, one of whom is destined to be a great leader in the Roman church. It's practically a suicide mission, but Arthur is a soldier under orders—and a committed Christian, interestingly enough—and his men are the only ones capable of carrying out the assignment.

It's a bad sign when you keep thinking of other films that are "just like" the one in front of you. It's a worse sign when each movie you think of was a lot better than the one you're actually watching. In the early stretches, as we see this Dark Ages Magnificent Seven ride to the rescue, arrayed in various picturesque formations—seven is a good number for that kind of thing—there's some pretty nifty soldier banter amongst Our Heroes that begins to distinguish one amazingly gifted warrior from the next. It's sort of Seven Samurai, transported to the wilds of ancient Britain instead of the wild west of not-quite-so-ancient America. One problem: this kind of movie depends on well-drawn, interesting characters who we come to care about as they carry out their various heroics. But in King Arthur, most of the character development that starts out so promisingly—Bors (Ray Winstone) is particularly well drawn, and the soldierly comraderie convincing—falls completely into the background once the main plot kicks in.

Lancelot and his medieval backscratchers

You see, when Arthur and his posse find the folks they're supposed to evacuate, they can't bring themselves to leave the family's serfs and slaves and such to be slaughtered by the savage Saxons. Of course it's impossible for the seven of them to safely transport all these village people to safety, pursued by the blood-thirsty enemy soldiers, but they can't leave these defenseless people to be slaughtered.

There comes a point where the Roman-led forces stare down the fur-clad barbarian hordes, and I could only think that even though the tables were somewhat turned, we'd seen this before. When I got home I found out screenwriter David Franzoni also penned Gladiator, and I remembered where.

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