"King Arthur" departs so radically from what most of us accept as the basics (i.e., what we've gleaned from Sir Thomas Malory, T. H. White, Walt Disney, and Monty Python) that the movie qualifies as a whole new myth. The opening titles do posit some bunk about "recently discovered archeological evidence," which is the first time I've heard that rationalization used to explain the existence of Keira Knightley. "King Arthur," in other words, does to this legend what "Troy" did to Homer, with one important difference: It's a better movie. At least, it's a solid, somber, rousing piece of studio zirconium: cobbled together from "Gladiator," "Braveheart," "Lord of the Rings," "The Magnificent Seven," and five tons of Hollywood hooey.
It's certainly a Jerry Bruckheimer production -- the dialogue clanks with the italicized simplicity of a comic book, and Ray Winstone's high-fiving Sir Bors is a play for the locker-room ya-
hoos in the back row (if this were "Top Gun," he'd be Goose). But "Arthur" is also an Antoine Fuqua movie, and I'm a little startled to report that Fuqua ("Training Day") has directed the hell out of some of it. The back story -- and here lovers of the classic Arthurian mythos will want to hold their sides or noses -- is that such knights as ladykiller Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd, of TV's "Horatio Hornblower"), stalwart Galahad (Hugh Dancy), hulking Dagonet (Ray Stevenson), and hawk-loving Tristan (Mads Mikkelsen) were conscripted in their teens by the Roman Empire from the conquered lands of Sarmatia, near the Black Sea. They've been posted to the scrubby little island of Britain, where their commander is the Roman-British half-breed Artorius, a.k.a. Arthur, who has imbibed dangerous ideas about equality and freedom during his visits to the home office in Italy.
