By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimoun Housou, Aidan Gillen, Freddie Fox, Craig McGinlay, Michael Hadley, Tom Wu, Annabelle Wallis and Eric Bana.
Rating: Average.
Guy Ritchie, director of “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”, “Snatch” and “Sherlock Holmes” brings “King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword” and frankly I was having to much expectations with this film which it could had a much better result.
Based on the legends of “King Arthur” the movie tells the story of Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) a young man who has being raised on the streets, becoming a hustler and fighter. Everything will change for Arthur after an encounter with people who are related to the English royalty.
Arthur will be forced to pull the sword in the stone, which he achieves and he will realize the secrets about his birthright that has been taken away from his uncle and the current King Vortigern (Jude Law).
Not only Arthur will try to reclaim what has been taking from him, but he swears revenge against his uncle and rule England as the rightful King.
“King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword” is a movie that does entertain but at the same time is a movie that has to many flaws.
One of the major flaws that I saw in this film was the screenplay written by Guy Ritchie, Joby Harold and Lionel Wigram. It had to many problems in terms of sequence and by moments didn´t make any sense, specially the opening scene where Elephants are being seen attacking the King´s men and none of this wasn´t mentioned in any of the King Arthur books.
Also by moments it was lack on detail and some of the dialogue was to on the nose as well as some scenes.
The abuse of flashbacks were another problem. With one it could have been enough but using flashbacks it´s not the way to illustrate conflict. The best way to do it is through dialogue and actions.
There is no doubt that Guy Ritchie is a very talented director but I felt that with “King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword” he was more focused on Production Value than story itself.
The things that I did like of the film was the way how Ritchie managed how to intercut the scenes with dialogue and real action. Ritchie is one of the masters of using this tool and it´s one of his trademarks in all of the movies that he has done and nobody in the industry can do it better than him.
The editing was really well made but the use of CGI was excessive and by moments it was completely unnecessary since I felt that it didn´t mean anything for the story.
Charlie Hunnam and Jude Law are really good in their respective roles and it was very good seeing them portraying this kind of roles.
I was having very big expectations towards this movie since I do consider Guy Ritchie one of Hollywood´s most talented filmmakers but I must say that after “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”, this is his weakest film.
I feel that if more time would have been invested in story the movie could have had another result and it would have been a great one.
With that being said I´m giving “King Arthur: Legend of The Sword” a marginal recommendation due to the flaws that I previously mentioned.