Stick with the film a little bit and you'll get to see Liam Neeson back before he was "Liam Neeson", though certainly not before he had to deal with the Redgrave family, because if you stick with the film a little bit, then you'll also spot Corin Redgrave. Thirteen… More
Stick with the film a little bit and you'll get to see Liam Neeson back before he was "Liam Neeson", though certainly not before he had to deal with the Redgrave family, because if you stick with the film a little bit, then you'll also spot Corin Redgrave. Thirteen years after this film came out, Neeson ended up marrying Corin's niece, and for some reason, I can't shake the feeling that this film is actually an awesome testament to the method acting abilities of Neeson and the late Corin Redgrave, because they, like the royal people of this time, probably put together some kind of arranged marriage between Neeson and Natasha Richardson. Hey, if Neeson made a deal with anyone, it was probably the Devil, because he's 60 now, and he still looks better than me, which makes me think that they seriously should have given Neeson the King Arthur role, because the then-35-year-old leading man Nigel Terry wasn't especially convincing as a teenaged Arthur, whereas Neeson, at 28, coule have easily been mistaken for a toddler or something, or at least if he told you that's what he looks like, because I for one will believe anything Neeson says (Don't want to mess with those special set of skills). Hey, that casting wasn't the first mistake that this film's director and producer John Boorman made, as we learned from the certain other film that he did that started with an "Ex" and came right before this film. Speaking of dealing with the Devil, I can see ol' Goat Legs himself agreeing to make Boorman a popular director, only Boorman would have to have a mostly cult following and would have to do the ridiculous sequel to the classic film about the Devil. Well, either they agreed on that, or that "Deliverance" would be a hit, but Boorman could never be able to do another good thriller. I guess "The Tailor of Panama" taught us that Boorman found a loophole that says that he can still do good spy thrillers, but before Boorman made that discovery, he retreated to more dramatic efforts in order to make good films, though maybe he could have gotten off to a better start with his more dramatic streak, for although this film is enjoyable, it's not quite genuinely good, and for, oh, so very many reasons.
I hear the Blu-Ray of this film has pretty poor audio quality, and really, I can imagine, as the sound design on this film, no matter which way you look at it, is pretty shoddy, which I know sounds like a very small complaint, probably because it kind of is, but when you get down to the film, the faulty sound design is so very off-putting in a fashion that is unmissably amateur, making one glaring mistake after another that really does crawl under your skin and even expel you from the film on a few occasions; it certainly exposes an almost sizable degree of incompetence in this film that taints its dramatic effectiveness. Still, as I said, while this unusual technical flaw does do more damage than you would expect, it remains a rather minor flaw, especially in comparison with a much bigger disengaging misstep, the script, which is plagued by more than a few cliches and a couple of spotty pieces of dialogue, and, perhaps most of all, by faulty story structure. A runtime of 140 minutes sounds reasonably hefty, but when we're talking about the legend of the life and rule of King Arthur, that runtime doesn't sound nearly long enough, and sure enough isn't, for the film ever so clumsily and heavy-handedly hurries along, slam-banging in plot points with little delicacy before it rushes off to the next one, and after a short while of this, the film becomes hopelessly disengaging. Still, when you get down to it, the central problem with this film is simply its being just so blasted silly, making the aforementioned and other glaringly amateur, or even incompetent mistakes with such clumsiness that, quite often, it's borderline laughable, and sometimes really is all-out laughable. As I said, the story is structured messily and cheesily, with corny concepts and somewhat flat story spots and characters, made all the worse by the aforementioned hit-or-miss dialogue and set pieces that quite a few performers play up pretty poorly and director John Boorman often celebrates a bit too much, to the detriment of the convincingness of this world and the effectiveness of the film's substance. The film isn't relentlessly amateur, yet it does all too often summon laughs, both unintentional and intentional in an unfitting fashion, while making one story structure and storytelling mistake after another, and this timeless tale really does deserve much better than what this film is presenting: the components of a very mediocre film, something that this film doesn't drift too far from being. However, make no mistake, this film does ultimately transcend total mediocrity, for although its flaws are endless and immense, to the point of rendering the final product all too often laughable, this film will have its moments, and just enough for the final product to emerge still incredibly flawed, but generally worth watching, for, if nothing else, its visual style.
Though decidedly dated, Alex Thomson's cinematography remains nothing short of considerably attractive, boasting a kind of hazy yet still near-radiant lighting that bounces back color in a handsome fade that still has enough brightness to it to catch your eye on certain gorgeous moments of lighting. Aesthetically, the film is undeniably appealing to the point of easing you into film, while what eases you... somewhat into this film's world are production designs that have sometimes either also dated or were never all that impressive to begin with, but are generally effective enough for to get a reasonably fair feel for the environment, particularly when some actually pretty neat action sequences hit the scene. Still, the technical aspects that this film actually does get done right can't carry this film too far, alone, and really, a worthy story can carry a film a long way, and here, the story is, well, borderline butchered by Rospo Pallenberg's and John Boorman's immensely messy screenplay and by Boorman's spotty directorial storytelling, but still has enough juice in it to keep you fascinated, particularly around the final act, which is, in fact, rather well-done, being still fairly messy, but still charged with unexpected intrigue and even a bit of intensity (There are some graphic images that are pretty hardcore), yet until that point, the film gets by mostly because it has a pretty good story, complimented by, well, very few performances. As I said, quite a few performers play up the flaws in the screenplay and storytelling rather poorly, with some performers overacting, some performers cheesing things up and some performers just plain being an absolute disaster (John Boorman seriously shouldn't have gotten his daughter Katrine a job), though there are some decent show-stealers (Again, especially in the final act, when certain performers actually have stuff to do, and do it reasonably well), as well as faulty performers who manage to compensate, typically through striking charm that goes quite a ways. Of course, much of that can be said about the rest of the film, because at the end of the day, it's charm that saves this film, whether it be charm from the film's ambition or charm from the film's being so messy. Either way, the film boasts no pretense or overbearingness, but instead, ambition that graces the final product with both immense charm and, yes, entertainment value, for although the film has its slow spots and is rendered often disengaging by its being so messy, it's that very messiness that spark frenetic energy in this film and makes it so watchable. Sure, I'd imagine that Boorman was hoping for this film to go saved by a lot more than unintentional amusement, and lord knows that this film's being so messy is hardly a good thing all the time, yet that ambition, combined with the things that this film acutally does get right, breathes charming life into Boorman's faulty vision and creates a final product that will, or at least should appeal to only so many people (79%, and yet "Troy" doesn't make it past rotten?), but leaves the willing to walk away well-entertained, for both the right and wrong reasons.
Overall, the film is nothing if not a messy film, if there ever was one, with sometimes glaringly spotty technical value expelling you from the film, though not as much as the shoddy script, which goes riddled with cliches, improvable dialogue and faulty, heavy-handed story structure, further tainted by cheesy concepts made all the worse by quite a few spotty performances, including one by co-writer and director John Boorman, whose promising vision emerges riddled with amateur missteps that help in making for an absolute mess that runs the risk of collapsing to mediocre, yet surprisingly doesn't, holding your attention with handsome cinematography and other technical aspects that really do work, as well as with a certain aura of charm in most performances and a certain immense aura of charm within the film itself, partially due to the strength of the mostly messily handled but occasionally - especially in the final act - reasonably well-done subject matter and largely due to the entertainment value spawned from lively ambition and more often than not rather enjoyable messiness, thus leaving "Excalibur" to stand immensely faulty as an underwhelming mess, yet one that boasts the undeniably charming ambition needed to stand as generally enjoyable.
2.5/5 - Fair
