King Arthur: Legend of the Sword 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review
Brad Sturdivant
August 17th, 2017
I’ve always found the story of King Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin and the knights of the round table to be very fascinating. It’s the medieval era that everyone wishes was really true. We’ve seen the story play out on the big screen in various forms over the years. EXCALIBUR gave us a supernatural adventure take on the story, FIRST KNIGHT gave us an overly dramatic, romantic telling and MONTY PYTHON went slapstick with THE HOLY GRAIL. Director Guy Ritchie went a different direction and with KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD, we get some action, a lot of talking and a lot of posturing all set to rock music. The film isn’t terrible, but it feels overly familiar and it somehow manages to drag on, making the whole story feel a lot more boring than it should.
Charlie Hunnam stars as Arthur, a would-be king that was orphaned when his uncle (Vortigern, played by Jude Law) betrayed his father to take over as king. So Arthur grew up in a brothel, where through a quickly edited montage, we see him learn to fight and scheme to make ends meet. Meanwhile, Vortigern is happy being king, but things take a turn when the sword, Excalibur, reveals itself in a rock. Vortigern learns, through a magical octo-witch, that only the true heir to the throne can free the sword. So Vortigern rounds up every male in the city to try and lift the sword and that’s when Arthur gives it a go and so begins the Arthur vs. Vortigern battle.
The film is a complete mess, intertwining supernatural magic, drama and failed attempts at comedy, but we’ve actually seen this movie before back in 1991 with ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES. The idea is the same; a king/hero returns to dethrone the evil ruler by teaming up with a bunch of ragtag do-gooders. But I don’t remember Robin Hood being so boring. KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD takes an irritatingly long time to get going and even when it does, it relies too heavily on Charlie Hunnam’s abs to carry the scene. I like Hunnam, but he’s not the most charming guy and there’s something about him that’s a little obnoxious. The character, as written here, kind of needs that, but Hunnam plays it up a bit too much.
Guy Ritchie was an interesting choice to direct the film and he gives you pretty much what you expect. Remember in LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELLS, SNATCH and the SHERLOCK HOLMES movies when he would do a little fast-edited montage to show the team planning a heist or doing something cool? He does that again with King Arthur and it feels weird. One minute we’re watching a medieval story about a boy trying to regain his throne and the next we’re watching “SNATCH” in the middle ages. Ritchie never seemed to be comfortable with the tone of the film and it was clear no one involved had any idea with what to do with the supernatural element. We all know Merlin had a big part in the Arthur legend, but between the octo-witch and The Mage (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), the magical part of the film never fit together.
As the film ran on, my interest continued to wane. We all knew how the story was going to end, which is a severe problem when making origin stories of famous folktale heroes as Ridley Scott found out with ROBIN HOOD. But there’s a decent story somewhere in here that never got going in favor of trying to make everything look “cool”.
4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: I really wanted to profess that a saving grace to King Arthur was that it looks great on 4K, but alas, it can’t even manage to earn that compliment. Instead, I have to fall back on the standard “it’s better than the Blu-ray, but not by much” assessment. KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD is a dark film and in some ways it’s helped by the HDR, but there are a lot of scenes that feature too much CGI (such as Vortigern’s meeting with the octo-witches) and others that are too blurry in their own right to benefit from more detail (the opening battle). The closeups of course look better, as do all of the scenes featuring vast landscapes, but it’s not enough to make much of a difference.
Audio: The Dolby Atmos track is included on both the 4K and Blu-ray discs and it sounds wonderful.
This title was reviewed using a Samsung UBD-K8500 with a Sony XBR75X850C TV.
The 4K UHD does not contain any exclusive features, but it does include a Blu-ray of the film, which includes the following special features:
Featurettes (1:16:23): There’s a collection of 8 featurettes that focus on stunts, settings and the editing of the film. Some of these are a little redundant, but none of them were in depth enough to grab my attention. I would have liked to have heard more from Guy Ritchie.
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