King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword is a re-imagining of the classic King Arthur tale from the middle ages about a legendary King. The film is directed by Guy Ritchie who some may know for films such as Sherlock Holmes and the more recent Man From U.N.C.L.E. The film stars Charlie Hunnam, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Jude Law, Djimon Hounsou and Eric Bana.
Going in to see this film, I was quite excited to see it. In recent months I have become slightly obsessed with the Middle Ages and have been very into the TV show, Vikings. I’ve also been reading quite a lot about the period and long time readers of the site will know that I love the Crusader Kings II video game. So of course I was a little excited to see King Arthur. King Arthur is a figure that has been around in the cinema quite a few times now and there are multiple movies, TV shows and books about him, all with different versions of his tale to tell, he’s even in a few episodes of Once Upon A Time at the moment. He’s everywhere, he’s a super famous figure.
While this film isn’t something I would consider to be going down in cinema history as one of the best things ever, I found myself really enjoying the experience. The music was something that really stood out to me during the film and it was used well by Guy Ritchie. The music is well mixed in there in amongst an incredibly fast paced historical film. Much unlike most historical films, which to me have a slow pace to their storytelling, King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword is quite quick.
One of the performances that really impressed me in this film was that of Jude Law. I haven’t seen Jude Law do anything really like this film before and he was an excellent villain and I loved his work here as King Vortigern. As villains go in 2017, this one I think is actually my favourite in what seems to be a pretty poor year for film villains. I actually can’t really even name anyone memorable this year yet. But Vortigern, he was great!
In this film, I also enjoyed Charlie Hunnam who played King Arthur. This character is basically the hero we’ve come to know and get for most films recently, everyone’s a hero and a one man army. What’s different about this I suppose is that we’re in the middle ages and it’s a period I’ve not really seen much of this type of character in before. It seemed to me that Charlie was a good pick for King Arthur and is a lot of fun to watch. Arthur has a few smart lines which are delivered well by the actor and Charlie Hunnam is a strong enough person to convincingly play the character. Although I would note that he’s maybe not the most developed hero I’ve seen at the cinema recently, but am I really expecting that from an action film? No I’m not.
The special effects were impressive. I loved all the of the magic this film had in it. You got strange octopus/people monsters, a massive warrior with a metal skeleton mask, some swift sword action, big eagles attacking people and a giant snake! I really enjoyed the use of magic in the story and the whole fantasy element of the period and how it was used in this King Arthur film. Astrid Bergès-Frisbey plays the only Mage in the film and her character’s name is very simply, “The Mage”, and she’s great! If the film does get to have a sequel I would be interested to see what they could do with this character in the future.
Overall King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword is a super fun action film to see this weekend. Some people maybe won’t like the medieval period and might not be so into this, but if you do like the period, there’s a lot of fun to be had with this film. Guy Ritchie keeps things fast paced, with well choreographed action scenes and well put together musical pieces. I loved Jude Law’s performance as the villain Vortigern and enjoyed Charlie Hunnam’s King Arthur. The special effects are great and the use of magic was interesting, it’s a nice fantasy world. It’s a type of film in a period we don’t really get to see much, which was actually quite creative for a story that’s been told many times. It may not be the most well written masterpiece of film, but as an action fantasy movie in the middle ages, it sure was a lot of fun and I loved it!
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