Action/Adventure/Romance
2 hours and 14 minutes
Rated: PG-13
Written by: William Nicholson
Directed by: Jerry Zucker
Produced by: Hunt Lowry & Jerry Zucker
Cast:
Sean Connery
Richard Gere
Julia Ormond
Ben Cross
Their greatest battle would be for her love.
The tale of King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Lady Guinevere, and Camelot is one that has been told so many times in countless mediums of storytelling that it has become all but impossible to decide whether each new telling ought to be classified as a "remake" or as a "re-imagining". Perhaps it all comes down to the connotations behind those words that any given viewer might choose to assign to them. Nevertheless, First Knight, happens to be a very stylized retelling of this story that wants very badly to succeed in doing what it hopes to do. In some areas it is successful. In others it is a miserable failure.
Director Jerry Zucker had managed to earn some notoriety by the mid 1990s due the unexpected success of his film Ghost. Given his previous goofball comedies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun films, no one saw Zucker's crossing over into the world of serious dramas as being a successful endeavor. They were wrong. Given his new found claim-to-fame as a dramatist and no longer a satirist, Zucker wanted to helm an expensive retelling of the King Arthur love triangle.
Credit must be given to both Zucker and screenwriter William Nicholson. As far as other retellings of this story go, First Knight handles its content with a sense of realism and maturity. Gone are the dragons, gone is the Holy Grail, gone is Merlin and any signs of magic. Instead, what we are left with is the story's humanity, and the raw emotions that these characters - now presented as being more human than ever before - all must go through given the challenges they face.
But this is of course problematic too. At over two hours in length, the film becomes quite boring at times - often dragging through generic romantic speeches that after awhile one feels were lifted from Hallmark cards. There's only so much of this viewers can honestly take - and as impressive as they are, the performances and the action sequences aren't enough to break apart these lulls with moments of genuine entertainment. Had the film been tightened up a tad around its edges, perhaps these romantic moments would have come across as being genuinely romantic and not monotonous.
Composer Jerry Goldsmith offers some truly remarkable scores, as is expected given his level of talent. Less impressive are the film's CGI effects. While they are few and far between considering the amount of CGI the films of today are given, they have since dated poorly and work entirely against the atmosphere of realism that Zucker was hoping to create. Production designer John Box must be commended for his enormous undertaking of making Camelot and other locales come to life. There are moments where things look too polished - too pristine - for medieval times, but one quickly gets the sense that this was Box's intention all along. We're not supposed to believe that this is Camelot had it existed in reality of the times, but rather that this is the Camelot we've all envisioned in our heads - shiny and glorious.
The film's performances range from entirely unimpressive to absolutely outstanding. Ben Cross does an alright job as the film's antagonist, but guaranteed by the film's conclusion no one discusses him as being a standout performer. He does offer genuine moments of conflict, but one gets the impression that any of-the-right-age British actor could have accomplished this - maybe even better. Julia Ormond is exceptional, but again is forced to deliver most of her dialogue through boring and repetitive romantic sequences that may have some viewers routing against her rather than for her. The film's standout performance - not surprisingly - is Sean Connery's Arthur. Connery embodies this character as if it were the role he were born to play. His Arthur is a deeply troubled and tired man whose greatest fear is having to die alone. We see the humanity that Zucker so desperately wanted this film to have through Connery's performance alone. Richard Gere, conversely, is so horribly miscast I dare anyone to find a greater example of miscasting in cinematic history (just kidding - John Wayne as Genghis Khan was way worse, I know). Still, why Gere was even considered by Zucker is unfathomable. If Zucker wanted First Knight to be an Arthur story grounded in realism, then casting a young, heart-throb, American actor as the French knight Lancelot was the worst decision he could have made. And despite Gere handling himself very well during the film's action sequences, his performance plays an enormous part in the disappointing overall effect of this film.
Despite its wanting to be grounded in realism and humanity, its having some truly terrific action sequences, and one of Sean Connery's greatest performances, First Knight is a movie that greatly fails at communicating the intentions it so desperately hoped to convey to its viewers. It's far from any of the persons involved worst piece ... but it is nowhere near any of their best.
5.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment