FILM REVIEW OF ''KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD" (2017)

Hollywood must constantly reinvent old yarns to make them relevant for contemporary audiences.  “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” director Guy Ritchie embraces this strategy with his spectacular, $175-million, sword & sorcery saga “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” (**** OUT OF ****), starring “Sons of Anarchy’s” Charlie Hunnam as the title character.  Unmistakably inspired by the popular HBO series “Game of Thrones,” Ritchie and scenarists Joby Harold of “Awake” and Lionel Wigram of “Sherlock Holmes,” adapting a story by Harold and “Jack the Giant Slayer’s” David Dobkin, have appropriated the venerable legend and accentuated its far-fetched fantasy elements.  If you’re expecting either a rehash of John Boorman’s splendid “Excalibur” (1981) or Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” (2004) with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley, the provocative departures Ritchie and company have taken may alienate you.  Anybody expecting Ritchie’s “King Arthur” will stick to the legends may feel disgruntled by this two-hour plus, PG-13 swashbuckler.  Since its release, “King Arthur” has proven not what most audiences either sought or expected, and the Warner Brothers release has been branded a disaster considering its miserable $15-million opening.  Nevertheless, “King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword” qualifies as a terrific tale with stupendous CGI and ranks as the best version of the myth to grace screens since “Excalibur.” Mind you, “King Arthur” concerns itself more with the eponymous hero’s revenge against his repellent uncle than a romantic escapade like the Sean Connery & Richard Gere version “First Knight” (1995) where the two fought over Guinevere.  At the same time, “King Arthur” utilizes the familiar tropes of most Arthurian epics, but deploys them in ways both unusual and refreshing.

 

“King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” opens with a prologue which states that mage (magicians) and man no longer live in harmony.  The wicked warlock Mordred (Rob Knighton of “All Things to Men”) storms Uther Pendragon’s (Eric Bana of “Hulk”) kingdom with three gargantuan pachyderms—bigger than any you’ve seen--to destroy it.  These pachyderms have wrecking balls attached to their trunks, and they shatter the stone masonry as if it were made from papier mâché.  These rampaging beasts smash Camelot’s walls until Uther clambers aboard Mordred’s elephant and apparently decapitates the malevolent mage. Temporarily, order appears restored, until Uther’s deceitful brother, Vortigern (Jude Law of “Gattaca”), forfeits his wife Elsa (Katie McGrath) to three evil sea-witches equipped with the tentacles of an octopus.  He sacrifices Elsa so he can conjure up the Demon Knight to kill not only Uther, but also his wife in a larger-than-life clash.  The Demon Knight resembles those armor-clad behemoths that artist Frank Frazetta once created for the classic Molly Hatchet album covers in the 1970s.  Uther wields Excalibur against the enormous Demon Knight, but this monstrous fiend overwhelms him.  Before he dies, Uther orders young Arthur to flee.  Afterward, Uther hurls Excalibur aloft so that the sword turns somersaults in the air.  As he falls to his knees, Uther turns into a stone, and Excalibur impales itself to the hilt between Uther’s shoulder blades.  Vortigern sloughs off the Demon Knight form he took on in the fight and watches as his elder brother—now a huge rock--plunges into the bay with Excalibur sticking out of the rock.  Meantime, Uther’s infant son Arthur is swept down river in a boat like the infant Moses and compassionate prostitutes take him in and raise the lad as if he belonged to them. 

 

At this point, Vortigern has practiced enough black magic to make himself invincible until he learns that Excalibur has reappeared.  One day, the waters of the bay where Uther vanished with the sword in his back recede. Vortigern assembles young Englishman by the hundreds and ships them to the bay to see who can extract the sword from the stone.  Eventually, Vortigern’s dastardly henchmen capture Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) and he finds himself in front of Excalibur with no hope of pulling it out. Incredibly, Arthur draws the sword from the stone, but the sword delivers such a jolt to his system that our legendary hero drops it and collapses into an unconscious heap.  Later, Vortigern converses privately with Arthur, and Arthur assures him he has no wish to wear a crown.  Nevertheless, Vortigern plans to execute him in public.  Happily, a miracle appears in the form of an anonymous Mage (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey of “Julliette”) dispatched by Merlin.  She visits one of Uther’s former knights, Bedivere (Djimon Hounsou of “Amistad”), and explains that his men and he must intervene before Vortigern can behead Arthur.  The next time we see Arthur, he is kneeling at an altar awaiting the executioner’s pleasure.  The Mage conjures up supernatural elements that paralyze Vortigern, sends his knights scrambling to save him, while Bedivere’s men rescue Arthur.  Afterward, “King Arthur” depicts our hero’s reluctance not only to take up Excalibur, but also to wield it to avenge the cold-blooded murder of his mother and father.

 

Charlie Hunnam makes a charismatic Arthur.  Indeed, compared with previous Arthurs, Hunnam could be hailed as ‘the man who didn’t want to be king,’ such is his reluctance to brandish Excalibur and solidify England against its adversaries both within and without the kingdom.  Director Guy Ritchie surrounds Hunnam with a thoroughly convincing cast, among them “Game of Thrones’” own Aidan Gillen.  If you’ve seen either of Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” thrillers, you will savor his snappy editing style and the amusing way that he condenses expository dialogue sequences.  At one point, the Mage sends our hero into the Dark Lands to learn about his past.  Indeed, Arthur’s past haunts him.  Eventually, he musters enough nerve from the experience to confront his treacherous uncle.  As the diabolical Vortigern, Jude Law indulges himself with an evil gleam in his eye, and his ominous henchmen in black armor are just as unsavory.  Despite its two-hour plus running time, “King Arthur” maintains its momentum, and Ritchie orchestrates some truly impressive battle sequences with computer generated imagery that enhances the larger-than-life spectacle. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE LAST WITCH HUNTER" (2015)

“The Last Witch Hunter” (* OUT OF ****) casts spells that are far from inspired and mediocre at best.  “Dungeons & Dragons” aficionado Vin Diesel toplines this ponderous, PG-13 rated pabulum as an 800-year old protagonist who struggles with the help of the Catholic Church to preserve a precarious peace between witches and mankind.  Not only does Diesel appear incredibly miscast as an immortal “Highlander” type medieval warrior careening around contemporary New York City in a sports car, but also this witchy washy yarn doesn’t surpass superior witchcraft fantasies such as “Snow White and The Huntsman” (2012) and “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” (2013).  The chief problem with this lavishly-produced, CGI-laden extravaganza is that it takes itself far too seriously.  Apart from its dire shortage of humor, this dreary potboiler suffers from a dearth of quotable dialogue, banal adversaries, and second-rate supporting characters.  Gifted thespians like Oscar-winner Michael Caine and Elijah Wood shrivel in lackluster roles as our hero’s sidekicks who are designated as ‘Dolans.’  “Sahara” director Breck Eisner and three scenarists, Cory Goodman of “Priest” along with Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless of “Dracula Untold,” have conjured up a synthetic storyline that generates neither charisma nor spectacle.  Actually, they appear to have imitated the sensational Wesley Snipes’ vampire saga “Blade” right down to its rebirth of an ancient blood demon.  Similarly, “The Last Witch Hunter” should have bristled with non-stop momentum, violently outlandish combat sequences, and a coherently contrived mythology.  Instead, it degenerates into a dreary mumbo-jumbo melodrama.  The most ambitious CGI scene pits our hero against a clumsy beast known as ‘the Sentinel,’ and he destroys behemoth with a sword as if he were a bullfighter straddling it.  This unruly creature resembles a huge tiger that appears as it if were assembled from wicker and features a jet engine afterburner for its gullet.  Our hero’s chief adversary is a hideous Witch Queen swarming with creepy crawlies who looks like she has spent too many centuries in a mud bath.  Moreover, she boasts none of the imaginative flamboyance of Charlize Theron’s enchantress in “Snow White and the Huntsman.” 

“The Last Witch Hunter” unfolds during the chilly Middle Ages.  A group of stalwart souls armed with swords trudge through snow-swept, mountainous terrain to storm an eerie cluster of haunted trees.  A despicable looking dame known as the Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht of the TV mini-series “The Strain”) inhabits this stronghold raging with fire and brimstone.  Predictably, she isn’t glad to see these bearded gate-crashers with their religious iconography.  This homicidal hag with her hatred for mankind has already decimated humanity with a black plague and incurred our hero’s wrath.  The Witch Queen’s pestilence exterminated our hero’s wife and daughter, and his happier times with them are recounted in several flashbacks.  When Kaulder (Vin Diesel with dwarfish dreadlocks) and the Witch Queen tangle, our fearless witch hunter skewers her with his flaming sword and finishes her off.  Ironically, Kaulder survives this trial by combat, but his survival becomes a tribulation.  “I curse you,” howls the wounded witch.  “You’ll never know peace. You will never die.”

 

Afterward, “The Last Witch Hunter” shifts its setting from the 13^th century to the 21st century.  Our brawny, shaven-headed hero with neither dwarfish facial fuzz nor noggin fur prowls a passenger jet as it encounters foul weather.  Actually, an ignorant young witch has smuggled a dangerous collection of runes aboard the aircraft, and she is to blame for the increment weather.  Naturally, our erudite hero invokes his age-old wisdom and defuses these volatile artifacts.  Nothing about this scene creates either suspense or excitement.  As his own personal reward, Kaulder seduces a nubile stewardess before he sits down for the last time with his 36^th Dolan (Michael Caine of “The Dark Knight”), a revered Catholic cleric who has spent the last 50 years chronicling our protagonist’s escapades for posterity.  Incidentally, Dolans are members of a covert Axe and Cross society within the Catholic Church.  Like Kaulder, they have devoted themselves to maintaining an uneasy truce between humans and witches.  In “The Last Witch Hunter,” witches walk the earth with mankind, just as vampires did in “Blade,” but few people know about their phantasmagorical presence.  Kaulder and the clerics act as intermediaries who work alongside the crafty Witch Counsel to keep these necromancers in line.  Kaulder captures witches who illegally practice black magic, and the Witch Counsel entomb them in a maze of caves.

 

The 36^th Dolan is poised to retire, and the 37^th Dolan (Elijah Wood of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy) prepares to replace him.  Although he saved the 37^th Dolan from a coven of witches, Kaulder doesn’t immediately recognize this newcomer.  Meantime, dramatic complications occur when the 36^th Dolan appears to have been murdered under mysterious circumstances by a shape-shifting sorcerer.  Kaulder discovers black magic at the scene of the crime and suspects that his ancient adversary, the Witch Queen, may have been playing possum all those years.  Along the way, Kaulder recruits a ‘good’ witch Chloe (Rose Leslie from “Game of Thrones”) to help him sort out the mystery.  Chloe’s claim to fame is her ability to cavort in dreams.  Happily, she rescues Kaulder from one disastrous dream after another when the Witch Queen’s evil cronies attack him on several occasions.  Our hero believes the solution to his quandary lies within his “Matrix” like dreams.

Ultimately, “The Last Witch Hunter” is largely incomprehensible gobbledygook.  Eisner and his scribes have enormous problems mapping out their complex witchcraft mythology.  They sprinkle bread crumbs of information about these conjurers throughout the muddled melodramatics, but seldom does anything about them come across as palatable.  Two surprises occur during these sluggish shenanigans, but neither are genuine revelations if you have paid attention to the formulaic plot.  The villains don’t stand out from the background, and the Witch Queen is stuck in the mud from the start.  Eisner orchestrates several big-budget action scenes, but these emerge as sloppy exercises.  Altogether, “The Last Witch Hunter” qualifies as hex-rated rubbish.