King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

Where's a Pepsi when you need one?

Grade: B

Director: Guy Ritchie

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, and Eric Bana

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 6 min.

Whether or not you enjoy King Arthur: Legend of the Sword hinges on whether or not you embrace director Guy Ritchie’s distinctive, roiling filmmaking style. This isn’t Camelot, or Excalibur, or First Knight, or one of the several Arthurian revivals over the past decade or so, including Antoine Fuqua wretched 2004 update. There isn’t any sight of Guinevere and Lancelot, and only a passing mention of Merlin. It’s a gritty, grimy reimagining of the Arthurian mythos that’s overwrought and even confounding, but never dull or uninteresting.

Arthur is recast as an orphan in a basket, spirited away after the murder of his father, King Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana), at the hand of Uther’s brother, Vortigern (Jude Law, stealing every scene). Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) is raised in a Londinium brothel, a street urchin with a millennial sensibility. Back in Camelot, the sword Excalibur is plunged in a rock and can only be removed by Uther’s heir. So, King Vortigern pulls a Herod and conscripts every young male to give it a pull in order to root out the lone lurking threat to his throne.

Arthur removes the sword from the stone, then he’s saved from beheading by mates with such kitschy names as Wetstick (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Backlack (Neil Maskell) and Chinese George (Tom Wu). He’s also recruited by a woke resistance movement that includes the imposing Bedivere (Djimon Hounsou), Goosefat Bill the archer (Aidan Gillen of Game of Thrones), and a magical creature called the Mage (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). Together, they put the recalcitrant Arthur through his paces, including a test in the wilderness and using Excalibur's mystical properties to recall how his parents died.

Ritchie unabashedly pilfers a number of narrative inspirations. The Game of Thrones allusions are obvious. There’s some of The Lord of the Rings. There’s Jesus, Moses, and even Batman. And amid all the bloated bombast, hyper-editing, and steel guitar riffs, there are several crosscut dialogue sequences styled straight out of Snatch that mainly left me longing for Ritchie’s cockney gangster fare.

What’s inarguable is that the Arthurian legend needed an alternate approach beyond romance and show tunes, something to shake up its tired conventions. Ritchie does that lock, stock, and two smoking barrels. Audience reaction will determine whether Ritchie and Co. make good on a planned six-film Arthur series, much less one sequel. If Legend of the Sword is all we get, well, I’ve seen much worse.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

So, what do you remember about your

parents before their planet exploded?

Grade: B –

Director: Guy Ritchie

Starring: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Debicki

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 56 min.

Several years ago, Quentin Tarantino said he was extended, but turned down, several offers to direct a film version of the 1960s television show “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” In a way, he finally got his chance.

Guy Ritchie, one of the most notably post-Pulp Fiction-inspired auteurs, applies his Tarantino panache to the U.N.C.L.E. spy thriller adaptation, finally in theaters after over 20 years in development hell. Slick and ultra stylish, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’s narrative nonetheless lacks a certain I-don’t-know-what. Watching the film is rather like admiring an exotic sports car with sleek lines and luxury features, only to discover a straight-twin engine under the hood.

Set in the early 1960s, Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill, well, Superman), a former WWII profiteer turned CIA agent, and sullen KGB lackey Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer, once cast as Batman in George Miller’s aborted Justice League film project) are Cold War adversaries forced to join forces to track down an International Criminal Organization™ dabbling in stolen gold and loose nukes. The scoundrels have kidnapped a German nuclear scientist, whose daughter, Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander), is the key to locating him and THE BOMB.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a gorgeous film, with Ritchie’s sublime camerawork and kinetic editing bound by an eclectic soundtrack that borrows from Roberta Flack, Ennio Morricone, Nina Simone, Rita Pavone and many others. It’s “Mad Men” meets a “Vogue” magazine cover, with Vikander—having quite the breakout year—and Elizabeth Debicki, as a baubled and bangled baddie named Victoria, ably serving as sassy fashion plates.

While the actors are well-cast (save for Hammer and his Ruskie accent), the quippy script is droll without much sense of urgency. Although the world’s fate supposedly lies in the balance, Solo and Kuryakin quibble over whether you can accessorize a Paco Rabanne belt with a Tapu. There are several striking sequences: set to a Peppino Gagliardi ballata, Solo sits in a truck and sips Ruffino while a motorboat chase carries on in the background; a torture scene overseen by a Mengele-esque madman; the Dutch angles of Victoria lying atop a couch parallel to a prone, drugged Solo.

But if there’s such a thing as excessive cool. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. has it. Speedboats, race cars, Italian playboys, three-piece suits, Hugh Grant … it’s all there. What’s not there are genuine emotions and engaging action, from a confusingly edited backroads buggy chase to a mundane, detached climax. It’s a film to luxuriate over—like visiting an art gallery, you’ll enjoy much of what you see, but you won’t really feel like going back.

Next Day Air

What can clowns do for you?

Grade: C –

Director: Benny Boom

Starring: Donald Faison, Mos Def, Mike Epps, Wood Harris, Omari Harwick, Cisco Reyes, Yasmin Deliz, and Emilio Rivera

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 24 minutes

Director Benny Boom (“if that’s your real name…”) makes the leap from directing music videos for 50 Cent and Nas to channeling his inner Guy Ritchie in Next Day Air, a hyperactive hip-hop crime-comedy. The filmmakers might believe they are striking some blow for cinematic equality in creating a film in which all the characters are people of color. But, what are they really saying when all the African-Americans are gun-touting, pot-smoking psychopaths and Latinos are murderous drug dealers who run cock-fighting rings on the side.

When a Philly delivery driver (Donald Faison, far funnier and more comfortable on Scrubs) mistakenly takes a box containing 10 kilos of primo cocaine to a couple of low-level crooks (Mike Epps and Wood Harris) instead of the Hispanic middle-man across the hall (Cisco Reyes) and his sassy, slinky squeeze (Yasmin Deliz), it triggers a collision course of ultra-violent events. There’s little that is remotely redeeming here, as already inane dialogue is garbled still through a series of stereotypical, slang-ridden accents. And, Boom doesn’t have the Scorsese/Tarantino skill to seamlessly transition back and forth between bawdy comedy and sadistic violence.

Only the inexplicably underused Mos Def provides even a modicum of chuckles as a loopy, larcenous deliveryman. Otherwise, Next Day Air is one mishandled muddle that needs to be returned to sender.

Neil Morris