director/screenwriter
Brian Helgeland
producers
Todd Black
Brian Helgeland
Tim Van Rellim
cinematographer
Richard Greatrex
music
Carter Burwell
editor
Kevin Stitt
cast
Heath Ledger (William Thatcher)
Rufus Sewell (Count Adhemar)
Shannyn Sossamon (Jocelyn)
Paul Bettany (Geoffrey Chaucer)
Laura Fraser (Kate)
Mark Addy (Roland)
Alan Tudyk (Wat)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 132m
u.s.
release: May 11, 2001
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official website
other brian
helgeland films
reviewed on this website:
- the
order
- payback
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Surprise, surprise: A Knight's
Tale, after weeks of obnoxious hype (if you weren't sick
of "We Will Rock You" before, you probably are now),
turns out to be not bad and sometimes even pretty damn good --
the second goofily thirst-quenching no-brainer out of the box
this summer, after The
Mummy Returns. Can this actually mean the upcoming hot
season won't suck as badly as last summer? After all, by this
time last year, Battlefield
Earth and Gladiator
had already come out.
Not that A Knight's Tale
will bear much comparison to The Canterbury Tales or even
Excalibur. Writer-director Brian Helgeland, who co-wrote
the Oscar-winning L.A.
Confidential and directed 1999's Payback,
has made a cheerful beer-and-pizza movie that maybe deserves
to rank alongside George Romero's Knightriders as well
as some of the sword-and-sorcery movies of the '80s (Conan
the Barbarian, The Sword and the Sorcerer, The
Beastmaster) whose chief charm was that they didn't even
pretend to be "accurate." A Knight's Tale is
unabashedly contemporary in tone and spirit, and why the hell
not? It's not as if Hollywood has never done that before. If
you want the real deal, go read Chaucer in the original Middle
English (I have; he makes Eminem look like Mr. Rogers).
The latest anointed hunk, Heath
Ledger, acquits himself competently enough as William Thatcher,
a peasant's son who works as a squire for an over-the-hill knight
(Helgeland's opening text actually calls him "over-the-hill,"
a fair indication of what kind of movie this is; it also refers
to jousting "fans"). When the knight expires, William
dons his armor and, with the help of fellow groundlings Roland
(Mark Addy, making the same immediate tubby-regular-guy connection
with the audience that he made in The Full Monty) and
Wat (Alan Tudyk, going for Johnny Rotten in look and attitude),
passes himself off as "Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein of Gelderland"
despite having no particular Germanic accent. Securing fake "patents
of nobility" from an on-his-uppers Chaucer himself (the
scene-stealing Paul Bettany, who bears more than a little resemblance
to Helgeland), William is ready to joust.
Ah, yes, the jousting. Playing
to medieval-era arena crowds (all they need is a rainbow-head
John 3:16 guy in the stands), the jousting competitions hinge
on breaking your lance against another guy's armor or knocking
him off his horse. The jousts become funny in their very repetition
(smash! back for another pass! smash!) and phallic
nature (the guy with the truest stick wins). The horses thundering
along, the knights with their lances poised -- great stuff, say
I; unless you're the sort who makes it out to a renaissance faire
every year, you don't see this very often, and the low-tech spectacle
of men bashing each other with big poles is absurdly gratifying.
William's main competition
on the field is the jerky Rufus Sewell, whose imperious countenance
has doomed him to play treacherous wankers forevermore. William's
competition off the field is his own heart, which wants
to hand itself to the shiny lady-in-waiting Jocelyn. As played
by Shannyn Sossamon, Jocelyn mainly beams or pouts like a medieval
Denise Richards; I would've rather seen William go for his trusty
blacksmith Kate (Laura Fraser), who's meant to be a tomboy, though
the make-up and wardrobe departments amusingly forget to make
her tomboyish.
There's a good deal of goofing
around (Helgeland is deft at warming us to the four buddies via
William Goldman-esque badinage and snarky asides), as well as
a needless subplot involving William's dad, which comes with
its own laborious flashbacks; I'm convinced Helgeland could've
had a fast, streamlined drive-in movie had he deleted the Dad
material, which adds little except minutes. Still, A Knight's
Tale is jolly enough armor-clanging, and, yes, the rock songs
on the soundtrack do enhance the fun. The use of "We
Will Rock You" at the beginning suggests that, for all its
mainstream exertions, A Knight's Tale is actually something
of an experimental melding of old and new. By the time Helgeland
gets to a dance sequence set to David Bowie's "Golden Years,"
you've either accepted the musical choices or left the building
in disgust. I was still there, and happy.
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