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Who are the Knights of the Round Table? Well according to Jerry Bruckheimer they are a group of foreign warriors who are obligated to a 15 year service contract to defend Rome. With only a day left on their indenture Arthur and his nights are sent on an impossible quest to save a young man, who one day will become the Pope of Rome, from the invading Saxon army. However it gets more complicated from there. The English people are depicted as a bunch savages in blue war paint who reside in the woods outside of Arthur’s castle. They are at war with the Romans because the have occupied their land and are trying to instill Christianity on them. Nevertheless, with the oncoming Saxon invasion it looks as if the Romans, English, and foreign conscripts will have to join forces in order to survive.

Clive Owen plays an awkward Arthur who does no look or act like a King. He allows his men to repeatedly question his actions and has an identity crisis as he tries to decide if he is English or Roman. Just as in the movie Troy, this constant wavering becomes quite annoying because the audience can already predict the outcome without seeing the lengthy struggle. The bland dialogue does not help either, which essentially only provides rudimentary commentary for each scene. However the movie does have a few interesting characters like Keira Knightley, who plays a sexy yet lethal Guinevere and Ray Winstone as the zealous and vulgar knight named Bors. Now if only Clive Owen could vary some of his facial expressions instead of having that dull blank stare all the time this may have been a more enjoyable movie.

With the great success of movies like Braveheart and Gladiator there seems to be a new generation of historical epics like King Arthur. However, this movie does not live up to its predecessors. Despite its share of climatic battles, including one on a frozen lake where Arthur and his knights ingenuously decide to break the ice in order to sink their enemy, there seems to be something missing. For one, better dialogue and character development would help. The main factor that makes this a “B” movie is the lack of intensity. The outcome of each battle is too predictable and it doesn’t help that the movie is rated PG-13 - so despite all the slashing and bashing you don’t actually see anything happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a big fan of blood and gore, but if a movie is about valiant soldiers getting killed, it should actually show it.

When I fist saw the trailer for this movie, all I could remember was Guinevere depicted as scantly clad warrior covered from head to toe in blue body paint. “Did I accidently overdose on my multivitamins?” I thought to myself. Feeling a bit faint, I sat down and inserted my trusty copy of John Boorman’s Excalibur into the DVD player. Three hours later I was even more confused. How can you make a movie about King Arthur without having the famous love triangle between Guinevere, Arthur, and Lancelot or have Merlin, one of the greatest magicians, not being able to do any magic? I believe the latest trend to remove fantasy and magic from fiction is a step in the wrong direction. Without these elements, the story of Arthur is nothing more than an episode about knights on the History Channel spiced up with a girl in a leather brassiere and blue body paint.