King Arthur: Legend of the Sword review: An antiquarian version of Only Fools and Horses

The film only tells half the story. If there is a sequel, one can only hope that it has a little more grace and noblesse about it

Did they really have kung fu in Arthurian England and what has David Beckham done with his moisturiser? These are two of the many distracting questions provoked by Guy Ritchie’s eccentric and very laddish new fantasy adventure, King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword.

The setting may be Londinium in ancient times but all the characters here still speak in the same Mockney tones as the gangsters and chancers in Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels. There’s very little hint of the romantic mysticism of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur when we hear lines like “You’ve got some heat on you, Arthur” or “I want to get my arse out of here” or “go to Londinium, gather the lads.”

Even the names, “Goosefat Bill” or “Mischief John” or “flat nose Mike” or a pock-marked, armour-clad Beckham as “Trigger” suggest we are in some antiquarian version of Only Fools And Horses. Instead of cops or hot fuzz, Ritchie gives us “Blacklegs.”

Ritchie doesn’t skimp on the CGI-driven spectacle. The film opens with a very bloody battle scene in which King Uther (Eric Bana) repels the dark forces summoned up by the mischievous Mordred.

These dark forces include gigantic elephants which knock over the sturdiest castles as if they’re made of cheap LEGO. Uther doesn’t just have right on his side. He has Excalibur, the magical sword. In these early scenes, Bana gives the film a sense of dignity and majesty that it otherwise completely lacks.

Jude Law enjoys himself as the film’s main villain, Vortigern, a power-crazed psychopath who seems like Herod, the sheriff of Nottingham and The Young Pope rolled into one. He may have seized the crown but Uther’s young son somehow escaped – and he wants the boy killed.

This little waif turns up like Moses in the bullrushes in a basket in Londinium. The once and future king is raised in a brothel. He is taught how to fight by local martial arts instructor Kung Fu George and learns his street smarts and money hoarding skills all on his own. A montage sequence sees him grow from a boy to a man in a minute or less.

Part of the enduring appeal of the King Arthur myth lies in its appeal to notions of chivalry and honour – its high-mindedness. This, though, is a very low-minded movie. Charlie Hunnam was far more like the traditional, selfless and heroic King Arthur when he was playing English explorer Percy Fawcett in James Gray’s The Lost City Of Z. Here, by contrast, he is a complete jack the lad; a cheeky, irreverent bruiser, always ready to get one over on a passing Viking.

The film may be about King Arthur but that doesn't stop Ritchie from throwing in Dickensian elements (in the early scenes, Arthur has a hint of the Artful Dodger about him) and scenes of outlaws in woods that should more rightfully belong in Robin Hood. The seers who emerge from the tentacles of a giant octopus to tell Vortigern about the future could easily be mistaken for the witches from Macbeth.

There are nods, too, in the direction of Game Of Thrones (and one or two actors in the supporting cast are from the long-running HBO series.) At least, the plot doesn’t depart entirely from tradition. There’s still a sword in the stone. Arthur is the only one who can yank it out. Arthur is a reluctant leader, very conscious of his humble origins as “the bastard son of a prostitute.” He is too busy ducking and diving, bobbing and weaving, to want to usurp Vortigem from the throne until he realises that it’s his destiny to do so.

Ritchie alternates between portentous action scenes and joshing, flippant moments in which the characters goad and tease each other. There are lots of scenes of soldiers in chainmail being shot by arrows or falling to their death from high ramparts or having their throats cut. The strident folk music on the soundtrack has a jarring effect.

One of the problems here is the complete over-abundance of testosterone. There’s no Guinevere here. He flirts madly with a psychic and very beautiful Mage (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) after she takes him captive but the filmmakers aren’t able to engineer any meaningful romance between them.

Instead, Arthur, once his induction is over, concentrates all his attentions on “taking down” Vortigern and in learning how to use Excalibur without burning his hands. The visual effects are the most impressive element of the movie – the battle scenes in which thousands of soldiers charge headlong at one another or the strange, dream-like interludes with serpents and birds of prey or the flashbacks in which Arthur catches glimpses of the bloody events which left him orphaned.

Amid all the sound and fury, it takes a while to realise that actually not very much is happening here at all. Ritchie spends so long dealing with Arthur’s attempts to establish himself as the rightful king that he doesn’t have time to deal with the roundtable or to introduce us to Lancelot and co. We hardly get a glimpse of Merlin either. The film only tells half the story. If there is a sequel, one can only hope that it has a little more grace and noblesse about it.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword hits cinemas 19 May.