John Ford's the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ends with one of the great closing lines in cinematic history: "When the legend becomes fact," a newspaper reporter tells Jimmy Stewart's Ransom Stoddard, "print the legend." It's a maxim Hollywood has embraced for years, and rarely has a film illustrated why as well as producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Antoine Fuqua's new King Arthur. The story of King Arthur and his knights of the round table has inspired countless films, books, TV shows and myriad other adaptations. Arthur pulling his sword, Excalibur, from a stone; his love triangle with Guinevere and Lancelot; and his tempestuous relationship with the sorcerer Merlin are standard elements of the legend that has been retold numerous times over hundreds of years. Bruckheimer, Fuqua and Gladiator screenwriter David Franzoni throw out that legend and print what they present as "fact," a supposedly historically accurate version of the tale, excised of all the magic and most of the romance in favor of a dreary, plodding action film.
Here Arthur (Clive Owen) isn't a king of anything, but rather a Roman commander in fifth-century Britain, presiding over a group of indentured knights from Sarmatia, an ancient region near the Caspian Sea. Promised their freedom after 15 years of service, the knights are instead sent by a pissy Roman bureaucrat on one final mission, to rescue a rich Roman family from the clutches of the Saxons, who are invading Britain as the Romans take their leave. Along the way, they rescue Guinevere (Keira Knightley, who doesn't show up until a good 45 minutes into the film), recast as a warrior of the Woads, native Britons defending their land from outsiders.
Romans, Sarmatians, Woads, Saxons. The film is a mishmash of tribes and accents, with no particular cause to root for and no driving goal for the knights we're supposed to care about. Aside from Arthur, best friend Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd) and boorish Bors (Ray Winstone), the knights are interchangeable, and by the end of the film, I still couldn't tell a Gawain from a Galahad. Pretenses to historical accuracy notwithstanding, Arthur spends a whole lot of time making long-winded, modern-sounding speeches about free will, and the knights often talk as if they're in a gangster movie.
The story manages to be both aimless and predictable, the romance between Arthur and Guinevere is barely an afterthought, and the battle scenes are nothing new. Only during a face-off between the knights and Saxons on a frozen lake does the film approach anything resembling excitement. Owen is suitably regal as Arthur, and Knightley gives Guinevere a nice headstrong personality, but Winstone is out of place and poor Stellan Skarsgard is stuck grunting through a giant beard as the Saxon leader. Bruckheimer knows all about making legends, with a career's worth of over-the-top popcorn films under his belt; this time around, he should have heeded John Ford.