An average movie

I already saw this movie but, since it was a while back, I thought I might as well check it out again. Well, the damned thing didn’t grow old very well, I’m afraid. First of all, the King Arthur tale is one of those stories that has been told so many times, just like The Three Musketeers, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan or Robin Hood and every decade, we get a new version, even if we didn’t really ask for it. In the 2000's, just after the success of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean‘, even though it did sound like another misguided blockbuster, Jerry Bruckheimer released his own version which was directed by Antoine Fuqua but even though there was some buzz before its release, it didn’t get much love after all. Well, the cast was definitely interesting (Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd, Mads Mikkelsen, Joel Edgerton, Hugh Dancy, Ray Winstone, Ray Stevenson, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgård, Til Schweiger)  and the whole thing looked decent enough but this movie still didn’t really work though. Basically, they went for a gritty and more realistic approach, which wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it certainly didn’t help that, at the very last minute, they decided to massively tone down the violence displayed. Another thing that bothered me was that, while most of the cast was decent enough, especially Stellan Skarsgård who was pretty much pitch-perfect, Clive Owen was rather weak here. It’s rather funny that, back then, Bruckheimer rejected a then-unknown Daniel Craig in favor of Owen because he was convinced that Owen would become the next James Bond. Anyway, there was not a single scene during which Owen did sound or look convincing. To conclude, I wonder if my rating might not be too high here but I guess this movie might still be a worth a look though, at least, if you like the genre.