King Arthur - Blood and thunder of the Medieval variety

History, it's been said, is recorded by the victors. Or in the case of Hollywood, it's likely
the directors. Disney may have put up a major fuss over Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11,
and sent the hit crowd pleaser into exile from it's magic kingdom. But Disney's blockbuster
that follows on Fahrenheit's heels - King Arthur - is oddly enough in its own way nearly as
irreverent.

A de-mythologizing of the King Arthur legend and much more, director Antoine Fuqua's
version of that ancient lore hooks up with a school of historical thought that Arthur was
actually the Roman military chief Artorius. And that he lived nearly a century earlier,
around the time of the disintegration of the Roman Empire in 500 AD
For Black filmmaker Fuqua, directing King Arthur is seemingly an opportunity he
relishes for some candid truth-telling about aspects of Euro history, minus any idealized spin.
As such, the movie holds interest more as an artifact than entertainment.

There are plenty of majestic, painterly primal landscapes to behold in the film. But the
characters themselves have little time to evolve, they're just too busy making war. And when
will filmmakers finally figure out that there's a difference between conveying the sense and
impact of battle, and assaulting the audience with all of it like they're the enemy?
Fuqua throws all those tales of gallant knights and damsels in distress to the wind. His
King Arthur is filled with disgruntled soldiers like Arthur himself (Clive Owen), kidnapped
by the Roman Empire and forced to fight questionable wars they don't believe in, not unlike
conflicted sentiments today. Fuqua's screenwriter collaborator, David Franzoni, who also
penned Gladiator and the indignant docu-features Amistad and the McCarthy-period Citizen
Cohn, maintains an equally subversive tone here.

Civilization has its definite down side, as with imperialism and slavery. And Fuqua may
be on the trail of the roots of those obsessions to an early internal colonization of Europe.
Here the Pagans, arrow slinging native guerilla tribes in war paint, are the victims of an
oppressive church and empire. And Guinevere (Keira Knightley), no dainty princess she, is a
kind of hardened medieval feminist, and the aggressor to Arthur's bashful but equally driven
warrior, in both bed and on the battlefield.

A darkness seems to have fallen over movie action heroes of all kinds. With no longer
any clear cut delineation between right and wrong on or off screen, that moral ambiguity is
ripe for movies like Kill Bill, The Punisher, Man On Fire and King Arthur, that are less
about the triumph of good over evil, than the triumph of a lesser evil.

Clive Owen ... Arthur
Ioan Gruffudd ... Lancelot
Mads Mikkelsen ... Tristan
Joel Edgerton ... Gawain
Hugh Dancy ... Galahad
Ray Winstone ... Bors
Ray Stevenson ... Dagonet
Keira Knightley ... Guinevere
Stephen Dillane ... Merlin
Stellan Skarsgård ... Cerdic
Til Schweiger ... Cynric
Sean Gilder ... Jols
Pat Kinevane ... Horton
Ivano Marescotti ... Bishop Germanius
Ken Stott ... Marius Honorius