'King' lacks blood, guts

Yet another rendition of Arthurian lore hit screens last week. Following on the heels of numerous cinematic incarnations over the last half-century: some good (John Boorman's "Excalibur"), some bad (the Sean Connery/Richard Gere team-up "First Knight," which dropped nine years to the day of this latest redux), some comedic ("Monty Python and the Holy Grail") and some musical ("Camelot"), "King Arthur" is a different beast all together. Unlike its predecessors, "Arthur" asserts that it's the truth behind the legend. That is to say, it's factually accurate. As shepherded to the cinema by mega-bucks movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer, this a dubious claim at best.\nThe time frame is 452 A.D. Arthur is Artorius (the appropriately regal Clive Owen), a half-Roman, half-Briton commander of indentured Sarmatian troops. These soldiers amount to be the fabled Knights of the Round Table: among them, incessantly constipated-looking ladies' man Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd), faithful Gaiwan (Joel Edgerton), noble Galahad (Hugh Dancy), nobler Dagonet (Ray Stevenson), weapons expert Tristan (Mads Mikkelsen) and bald brawler Bors (Ray Winstone). Together, the men fend off local freedom fighters, the Woads (dubbed as such by the blue dye they sport on their skin, but they're essentially Celts), led by a magic-less Merlin (Stephen Dillane). That is until; a greater threat comes in the form of the Saxons, headed up by the decidedly cheerless, similarly named father-son duo of Cerdic (Stellan Skarsgård) and Cyric (Til Schweiger, who funnily enough, is a dead ringer for a dude I met in the drunk tank last month).\nThe film is entertaining to be sure, but it's also deeply flawed. Highly touted historical accuracy is thrown out the window numerous times throughout. Lancelot, fictitious character that he is, should've been excluded, as the love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere (Keira Knightley) and himself is merely hinted at via moony glances. Also, the weaponry implemented (crossbows and trebuchets) wasn't invented until hundreds of years after the fact. Lastly, Knightley's Pict priestess take on Guinevere might've fought ferociously as she's depicted doing in the flick, but she would've done so in the buff, as opposed to wearing "Road Warrior"-inspired S&M gear. I, for one, wouldn't have minded this in the least.\nMuch of what's here is good; it just needed to be fleshed out a tad more. The camaraderie amongst the knights is cool and oftentimes humorous, if only there were more of it to give each of these characters an identity. As is, the only standouts are Owen's dignified Arthur and Winstone's Bors, who hilariously refers to his 12 children as bastards (only one is named, the others numbered) and describes his penis as looking like a baby's arm holding an apple.\nDirector Antoine Fuqua's battle sequences, while compelling (especially an ice-bound one replete with underwater CG shots of the sheets cracking), have obviously been butchered to avoid the dreaded R rating. Each is a surrealistic affair with glimpses of gore, but all are edited so heavily it's often hard to see who's cleaving whom. If ever there was a movie screaming out for a DVD director's cut, it's this one -- hopefully, with blood and guts (both literal and figurative) intact.