Well, Warner Brothers knew what they were getting, and King Arthur delivers exactly what it says on the tin, a mega-budget Guy Ritchie movie, but unfortunately those two elements do not necessarily sit together comfortably. With its geezer dialogue that jars with the high-fantasy The Lord Of The Rings visual trappings and Ritchie's trademark unorthodox stylised direction style, the movie is at times kinetic and energised, but at others simply messy in delivery. Storytelling is often hampered by unnecessary narrative trickiness where clarity and a clear forward momentum would have helped enormously, and the film certainly loses its way in an extended mid-section assassination attempt and its aftermath. Whereas all of these ideas largely worked in Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes movies, owing to a lighter touch and the interplay between Downey Jnr and Law, King Arthur is much more heavy-handed, even down to its leaden music score, and the scale of its often-impressive visual effects seems too big. Law and Hunnam are fine - if anything, Hunnam's Arthur might have benefited from even more swagger. Overall, King Arthur has some interesting ideas, such as the origin of the sword in the stone, but it too often feels like a mis-match of style and material, and over-long as a result.
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