Is there a bigger blight on the cinema scene today than Jerry Bruckheimer? This awful film adaptation of the Arthurian legend is yet another example of Bruckherimer’s bloated, excessive, simplistic bombastic cinema. The tale of King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot and the knights of the round table have seen hundreds of incarnations from big budgeted spectacles, Broadway musicals, TV mini series and even opera. This is easily the worst I’ve seen. Purporting to be the “true” story of Arthur based on the latest archaeological findings (a dubious claim at best), it’s an overlong, laborious clichéd, horribly acted and absurd to the point of giggles. Director Antoine Fuqua has obviously studied (or perhaps borrowed) Kurosawa, Eisenstein and Olivier but to no avail though the film is best when everybody shuts up and we just get the visuals. The film, in its most hilarious moments, has the frail Keira Knightley as a sword wielding, blue faced Guinevere as Amazon warrior. Clive Owen walks through the part of Arthur saving himself the embarrassment of actually having to act it. No such luck for the others like Ioan Gruffudd, Hugh Dancy, Stellan Skarsgard and Ray Winstone in perhaps the film’s worst performance which is quite a feat. The earache of a thudding score is by the dreaded Hans Zimmer.
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