by Cole Smithey

A Knight’s Tale


Heath Ledger is by most accounts attractive, does a pretty good movie-star poker face, and has that rakish Australian swagger that pop movie audiences gravitate toward. Behind the failure of 10 Things I Hate About You and a near miss with The Patriot, Ledger digs his stakes deep into a movie designed purely for teen idol gratification. A Knight’s Tale is a cinematic defilement that plays under a banner of a “rock & roll fairy tale.” We get this exposition in the opening scene — set in 14th century Europe — when a crowd of period costumed spectators clap and chant to Queen’s stadium rabble rouser “We Will Rock You” at a jousting tournament. What follows are a long string of ’70s songs, like David Bowie’s “Golden Years,” playing while Ledger’s William Thatcher (any relation to Margaret?), a poor commoner and former footman to a real knight, begins his own illegal (as he is not of royal descent) jousting career. Endless jousting tournaments transpire with lots of balsa wood jousting poles splintering across the screen. It’s a classic example of a “what-on-earth-were-they-thinking?” movie that no group of filmmakers and actors could have pulled off.

“He will rock you,” is the tag line that the movie has amended from the Queen song “We Are the Champions.” When I think of being “rocked” by a movie I think of movies like A Clockwork Orange, Reservoir Dogs, or Starship Troopers. A Knight’s Tale is more on a par with a Freddie Prinze, Jr. teen romance than something from the days of King Arthur — see John Boorman’s Excalibur for that. The only time Knight rises above its junior high school cinema objectives is when Paul Bettany (Gangster No. 1) takes the screen as unemployed writer Geoffrey Chaucer. Bettany chews and spits out language like caviar on beef jerky. Bettany’s speeches to the tournament crowds, introducing his sire Ulrich von Liechtenstein of Gelderland (William), pop out of the movie like islands of monologue magic making sense of the surrounding morass of genre confusion.
But more frequent are scenes with Ledger and his somehow royal love interest Jocelyn (non-acted by newcomer Shannyn Sossamon). Their scenes together are painful in a way that might even pass as an innocent lack of skill if it weren’t for the way writer/director Brian Helgeland (writer on L.A. Confidential, director on Payback) continually uses takes that anyone else would have left on the cutting room floor. The intention seems to be that teens will identify with these actors because they themselves could give performances of equal effect. I suspect, that even your typical 13-year-old will feel like he or she is being underestimated. 

Sir Ulrich goes through the motions of winning countless jousting tournaments across Europe to impress Jocelyn and defeat his evil foe Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell - Cold Comfort Farm) aided by his crew of merry men. One of whom is a female blacksmith who uses a double Nike swoosh trademark as her engraved signature. As a movie made to direct teens toward somewhat better music than they currently listen to, and advise them on which brand of shoe to buy, A Knight’s Tale makes for a commercial that you would’ve turned off three minutes into. When the officially knighted Sir William performs his final tournament joust, wearing no armor, against his dark haired rival Adhemar, you can’t help wondering why no knights have been shown getting seriously hurt. Helgeland has made his medieval characters into rock stars that don’t really play their instruments. 

Perhaps A Knight’s Tale is a terribly flawed attempt at satire in which William’s rise to royalty is comparable to the social trajectory of a Bruce Springsteen or, more to the point, a David Bowie. If so, why did we have to go back 600 years for something that doesn’t even exist anymore in our own time? Rock stars are obsolete and so is the music of BTO and Thin Lizzy. I can’t think of a cinematic context, other than a documentary, that this genre of bad ’70s music would be appropriate for. I’m just glad that there weren’t any Doobie Brothers songs.

Swordfish


This stylish action heist movie makes “cyberspace” and theft look glamorous. Uber bad guy Gabriel Shear (John Travolta) convinces good guy superhacker Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) into helping him steal billions of dollars in illegal government funds (code-named Swordfish) to finance a ruthless anti-terrorism unit. Bullets fly, explosions rock, and unexpected objects take flight as cops and politicians crumble beneath a web of spectacular action. Good pacing and intriguing characters drive the overflowing testosterone blitz to an above average level of fun.

John Travolta emerges from the dark cloud he’s left behind with Battlefield Earth to shine as Gabriel, a self-styled Euro-trash criminal with a thing for Houdini illusions. Just when Travolta, with wing haircut and soul patch, gets so casual as Gabriel that he seems to be going through the motions, he blurts out a bit of dynamic energy that lets you know he’s absolutely present. In an especially enjoyable but brief standoff scene with Sam Shepard, as a corrupt senator, Travolta savors the repartee like a moth to flame. Shepard, for his part, provides enough fiery charisma to make his few concise scenes pop with volcanic punctuation.

The production team of Joel Silver (The Matrix) and Jonathan Krane (Face/Off) are slick proponents of 21st century action thrillers that make a point of adding surprises to the well-worn genre. One of the unforeseen arrivals in Swordfish is a return to sex and nudity as a necessary element of the gritty, urban nature of the action thriller (see 1973’s Serpico). Of course, it’s the entertainment trapping that they’re after, and there’s no denying that it does spice up the rigmarole of big action stunts and fancy photography to see what’s under that revealing dress.

Swordfish opens with a Tarantino-esque coffee shop scene with Gabriel pontificating about Dog Day Afternoon. Gabriel talks with unseen men about what a good movie Dog Day was, but how it failed to push the envelope, primarily because Pacino’s character didn’t start killing hostages immediately to effectively succeed in his mission. Gabriel finishes his coffee, gets up and walks out of the café right into the middle of a fierce hostage crisis occurring in the bank across the street. Snipers point from every roof, SWAT members swarm around while crash trucks and police cars block off every nook and cranny, and yet Gabriel walks through it all like some kind of grand conductor. It’s a pure moment of existential postmodern, deconstructionist bliss that taps right into the kind of CNN media-shaped reality that assaults living rooms whenever crisis allows.

Each of the 15 hostages wears hi-tech vests of explosives that will deploy if they stray beyond the immediate perimeter. This is a crisis that’s so out-of-control, it mocks the very presence of any attempted authorial supervision or television. In this way, Swordfish very quickly arrives at an action plot stalemate that openly defies an audience to second-guess what has preceeded or will happen next. The story soon spools back to the events leading up to the crisis, and characters are put through their identity revealing paces in one tense situation after another.

Given the recent spate of underwhelming action thrillers like 15 Minutes or Vertical Limit, it’s cleansing to see a creative approach to the genre that fires on all cylinders. Director Dominic Sena (Gone In 60 Seconds) lets a few obvious flaws slip through and doesn’t quite know how to milk optimal suspense from big action sequences, but he does catch tons of nuance from his actors. That’s not such a bad trade off when you consider dogs like 15 Minutes. Hugh Jackman (X-Men) is an absorbing actor to watch and promises to add his name to the list of Hollywood’s leading men. Jackman has a trace of Robert Mitchum in his demeanor that’s a welcome replacement to the smirky delivery of Bruce Willis, yesterday’s leading man action hero.