If you're into the classic Camelot legend, forget it. The film claims to be "the untold true story that inspired [it]," but it matters naught because you can't care. A friend said after last week's screening, "If you're going to throw out something that works, replace it with something as good....or leave it alone."

Forget the whole kingdom-despoiled thing....forget the metaphor. And definitely forget Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet belting out Lerner and Loewe in the original Broadway production of "Camelot."

Fuqua, Franzoni and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have made Arthur (Clive Owen) into a 5th Century Russian, serving the Romans in England. There's a round table and a few knights, but I never felt a recognizable "Knights of the Round Table" vibe. Merlin isn't a wizard any more - he's been changed into a leader of a guerilla army. And the romantic triangle between Arthur, Guinevere (Keira Knightley) and Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd) has been tossed out the window.

All right, a shred remains. Gruffudd (the first mate who pulled Kate Winslet out of the water in TITANIC) gives Knightley a couple of soulful stares, and Knightley gives him a semi-meaningful look back, but nothing results.

The real inspirations are BRAVEHEART and especially the first section of Ridley Scott's GLADIATOR. You know...when Russell Crowe and the Roman army shot those flaming arrows into the ranks of the bearded Germans who all went "awwrrgghh!" when they got stabbed or otherwise had their hide pierced? That whole cooler-than-cool wintry gloom thing, with all the CG snowflakes? KING ARTHUR has this down, baby...oh, yeah.

You might expect that a big-scale historical piece produced by Bruckheimer would be in the vein of A KNIGHT'S TALE....a goof-off movie with winks and asides and rock tunes. I guess Bruckheimer decided that a muddy, foggy, pseudo art-house approach would be less predictable. Which was a brave move on Jerry's part....except the story is a big so-what?

The set-up is about Arthur and his knights being sent on a mission to save some Roman wanker from the marauding, low-life Saxons, who are led by the heavily bearded, dead-eyed Cerdic (Stellan Skarsgard). The cornerstones of Skarsgaard's performance are an impassive glare and a certain muttered ruthlessness. (Sample lines: "kill her," "kill 'em all!"). Fascinating.

Knightley's Guinevere is a bit like Daniel Day Lewis in THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. She runs around with a bow and arrow and kills with impugnity....cool. And I loved the impudence in Fuqua's decision to have her wear a deerskin bikini outfit during the third act battle scenes, despite the general cold and dampness.

The theme is about Arthur realizing two-thirds of the way through that he doesn't want to be a mercenary for Rome any longer and that he needs to embrace being an English nativist and freedom-fighter, even if he's Russian-born and talks a lot early on about the refinements of Roman civilization.

But ethnicity doesn't really matter in the final analysis, he concludes. What does is the spirit of localism and standing up against the oppressions of imperial Rome.

In other words, Arthur's fighting spirit isn't that much different than the one driving the anti-American car-bombers and snipers in Iraq. There...I've finally explained the title of this article.

Are we not the Romans of our times? Are we not seen in some quarters as trying to impose our political /cultural values upon Iraq? Could a similar story not be filmed about an Iraqi officer who assists U.S. forces after the fall of Saddam, only to realize down the road that his true allegiance is with the anti-U.S. pro-Saddam nationalists?

We're supposed to side with Arthur, of course. But why? What, exactly, does England have that Rome doesn't? Keira Knightley, you might answer...the love of his life. But it's obvious from her scenes with Owen that Arthur isn't much in love with her (he is mainly devoted to looking glum and perturbed, and their sex scene feels rote), as well as the implication that she's not all that intrigued by Arthur, given the hints of interest in Lancelot.

The big action set piece is pretty good, even if it doesn't make much sense. Arthur and his men decide to entice 100 or so pursuing Saxons into battle atop a small frozen lake. The tension is about whether the ice will crack apart in time so the Saxons will fall into the icy water and the vastly-outnumbered Team Arthur will prevail. (VARIETY's Todd McCarthy has written that this sequence "reportedly derives" from an early Franzoni draft of GLADIATOR.)

But for the sequence to really work, you have to believe that the Saxons are the absolute worst archers in the history of ancient warfare, and the Romans are perfect ones...and I couldn't do that. I won't be the only one.

I liked Ray Winstone's performance as a crudely spirited knight (he likes to fuck, has a big family, etc.) named Bors, but I didn't much like his shaved head. There were fifth-century barbers who shaved heads with the same expertise shown by 21st Century hair-dressers in West Hollywood?

Clive Owen's performance as the title character is a study in unabated gloom. It's not a career killer (I've been hearing he's the big stand-out in Mike Nichols' CLOSER, coming out in December), but if I were Owen I'd be furious....at myself for taking the role, or at Bruckheimer or Fuqua. His dialogue is dreadful, or maybe it's just the way he reads it. Either way it's a chore...a drag.

McCarthy said KING ARTHUR's box-office will fall short of the Bruckheimer norm, and "will likely be closer to that of BRAVEHEART, which grossed only $76 million even with its Oscars." My gut says "nope." My gut says ARTHUR will tank on the second weekend.

Collateral Vision

In his just-posted review of Michael Man's COLLATERAL (DreamWorks, August 3), FILM COMMENT editor Gavin Smith says that the results of director Michael Mann's decision to shoot on digital video are "extraordinary, because Mann uses the format for maximum expressive effect, capturing a sense of depth in the darkness and manipulating color in post-production to generate a heightened, dreamlike liminality and an array of voluptuous visual textures.

"Mann's style has always been tinged with sci-fi overtones," Smith concludes, "but COLLATERAL is something else: it looks and sounds like a movie from the future."

That's interesting...exciting. Even if my impression, derived from watching the trailer that's been playing in theatres, is that COLLATERAL has the same vaguely pixellated texture I've noticed in other films that have been shot on video and transferred to film. I'm sorry to sound like a plebian, but my eye went right for the texture element....and I wasn't enthralled. Putz that I am, my first thought was, "This doesn't look as cool as HEAT."

Movies would be in a sad state without the urge to try something new, and I'm certainly not rejecting the look of COLLATERAL based on trailer footage...but I have to be honest and say I'm feeling a tiny bit concerned.

It's also unusual when a movie has two listed dp's. The COLLATERAL IMDB credits list Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron as the cinematographers. I tried searching this morning for reasons why - I'm presuming one was replaced by the other. I'm a fan of Cameron's (MAN ON FIRE, GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS, SWORDFISH) but not so much of Beebe's (IN THE CUT, CHICAGO). If anyone knows anything, please inform.

Out of the Past

The pleasures to be had from two new film noir DVD packages out this week -- one from Warner Home Video called "The Film Noir Collection: Vol. 1," and another from the crew at Universal Home Video -- are far more enjoyable than anything opening this week in theatres.

What a mood bath! Late '40s and early '50s noirs are so richly cinematic, so hauntingly photographed. My kids think they're boring (black-and-white, too much talk, too many guys wearing trenchcoats), but I guess they need a few more years of watching run-of-the-mill crime movies before they can appreciate their specialness.

The WHV package includes Jacques Tourneur's OUT OF THE PAST (the most fatalistic and best-written noir ever) , Robert Wise's THE SET-UP, John Huston's legendary THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, Edward Dmytryk's MURDER MY SWEET and Joseph H. Lewis's immortal GUN CRAZY.

They all look and sound terrific, although there's not much in the way of extras. OUT OF THE PAST and GUN CRAZY have good commentary tracks, the former provided by film noir authority James Ursini and GUN CRAZY's by Glenn Erickson.

I was especially taken by the quality of image and sound on the GUN CRAZY disc. I last saw this wonderfully tawdry B classic at some New York repertory house in the late '70s. It looked tolerable then, but the DVD is an eye-opener. The details, the tonal range, the sparkling silvery textures...but then first-rate DVD transfers have become the norm.

The Universal collection includes Frank Tuttle's THIS GUN FOR HIRE, John Farrow's THE BIG CLOCK, Robert Siodmak's CRISS CROSS, and Roy William Neill's BLACK ANGEL. Am I forgetting one? They all look and sound terrific, especially THIS GUN FOR HIRE.

My only beef is Warner Home Video's decision to use Ursini for the OUT OF THE PAST commentary track instead of paying for the superior commentary recorded by the great David Thomson for the Image laser disc of OUT OF THE PAST that came out...oh, 13 or 14 years ago. Ursini's observations are fairly astute but Thomson's work is a cut above ....it's richer, deeper, almost poetic at times. Thomson isn't regarded as one of our best film critics for nothing.

I called Thomson on Tuesday to ask if he had a copy of his commentary script so I could run some excerpts, but he doesn't. I then spoke to my former Reel.com boss Jeff Schwager, who not only produced the OUT OF THE PAST disc for Image but wrote an informative, well-researched essay for the liner notes about Frank Fenton (and not the credited Daniel Mainwaring) being the screenwriter most responsible for the film's wonderfully flavorful dialogue. He didn't have a transcript either.

But Schwager did offer to send a videotape with Thomson's commentary on it. Great -- I'll run excerpts sometime next week.

Marina Pamplona

I hate going to 4th of July fireworks shows, but a truly amazing and joyful thing happened last Sunday night as the kids and I were walking back to the car, heading north from the southern tip of the Marina del Rey peninsula where the show had just ended.

Hundreds of people were walking up the alley called the "Speedway." Up ahead were two idling L.A. firetrucks with their lights flashing -- one smaller, one larger. I don't know what the fire concern was about, but there they were. Everyone walked by the big truck and moved on. Then it started up and began to slowly cruise forward.

Dozens in the crowd suddenly decided to play "outrun the fire truck." It was a little bit like the bull run in Pamplona. The fire-truck driver was trying to cruise along as fast as he could without running anyone down, and everyone in front of him -- people on foot, on bikes, skateboarders -- was running to keep ahead of him. The mood was dopey and giddy. For ten minutes or so I was back in the fourth grade.

Brando

"I just wanted to write a quick note of thanks for reminding your readers to check out JULIUS CAESAR. I read your Brando piece and literally, right in the middle of reading your column, darted over to the indie video guy across the street and got the movie on VHS. I hadn't seen it since high school, and I remembered reading the play for an English class.

"Brando's reading of the 'cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war' speech must be the definitive reading. As a matter of fact, we should retire the word 'havoc.' Brando owns it now.

"I thought back to our class reading, and remembered how half-assed or misunderstood all of our interpretations were. All that iambic pentameter can be so intimidating and confusing... but when you see Shakespeare done right, done the way Brando, Gielgud and the rest of the cast do here, it just makes sense. No matter what language you might speak, you know like it's animal instinct what Brando's Marc Antony is getting across in that soliloquy.

"I later played the scene for my roommates and still welled up with tears of pride for Marlon's work. Maybe I'll stay up late tonight and pick out my favorite GODFATHER scenes. " -- Dylan Gaughan

"I take a back seat to no man in regarding Brando's erratic (at best) career with sorrow. But I have to add that his performance in SUPERMAN towers over everyone (and everything) in that overrated, silly movie. Twenty-five years after its release, Brando's sequence is the only one I remember with any pleasure.

"Excellent, too, is his extended cameo as the lawyer in A DRY, WHITE SEASON. His scenes are so much better than the rest of the movie that I agree with his claim that he wrote and directed them himself." -- Kevin Kusinitz, New York City.

I love 'Hollywood Elsewhere' and of course the first time I write you is give you a shot. From your past work I expected you to go with the wasted talent angle. You're not alone in your thinking, but I don't know why we can't appreciate what he gave us and leave it at that. Why this constant hand wringing about what might have been?

"Like so many others, I was always hoping there was one more great performance left. I often lamented the lack of work in what for others might have been their prime years. I've come to the conclusion that the lack of discipline, the stated contempt for his craft and all the other characteristics you and others didn't like in him were part of who he was. They, along with his unequaled talent made those performances possible.

"If he had been more disciplined and had more respect for acting and just tried harder he would have been Paul Newman. Do you think his performance in LAST TANGO IN PARIS would have been possible without all the negative baggage? Brando was one of a kind, and I'm just thankful for the gifts he left us." -- Tim Pope

Satisfaction

"FINALLY ! Someone besides me who was bored the hell outta his skull with this piece of crap called SPIDER-MAN 2. The way everyone has unanimously decided to kiss the web-clad ass of this movie is beyond me. I was bored as hell with it.

"I won't go into how I personally think the actors in it were lame (except Bruce Campbell ...he was hilarious), but I kept wondering if this was actual footage or just a filmed line-reading?

"What pissed me off more than anything was the whole thing with Spidey's powers. Yes, he loses them.... but why? For that matter, how does he get them back? These things are never explained. He goes through the whole thing of mentally not wanting to be Spidey anymore, but there's no reason given as to why his powers are out of whack. All I ask is an explanation. Bad diet/malnutrition? Seasonal lapse in powers? Eventual burn-out?

Plus there's this whole 'Hey, NY loves Spidey!' thing. This was a problem with the first one, too, when for some strange reason the New Yorkers threw trash at the Green Goblin. In this one, there's that whole subway thing where after making the most implausible rescue of a subway train the passengers carry him in Christ-like crowd- surf to the middle of the car.

"Amazingly, no one on a NY subway train has a disposable camera and is, as such, snapping away at the un-masked face that would likely go for more cash than the un-masked faces of Michael Jackson's kids? Then, after swearing not to tell (come on!), some snot-nose gives him back his mask that, if memory serves, flew off about a dozen blocks back when he was on the outside of the car.

"There is one scene I loved: the scene in the operating room where Doc Ock's tentacles go all nutso. That scene was pure Raimi. I can see why you loved the elevator scene with Hal Sparks. I wonder, was he playing his same character from 'Queer as Folk'?

"And I loved FARENHEIT 9/11. Saw it the Saturday it premiered as all the Friday shows were sold out. When the credits rolled, there wasn't a dry eye or an unclapping palm in the house." -- Charles S. Lewis III, Daly City, CA.

S.O.P.

"The reason for Fox Home Video putting out the R and NC-17 versions of THE DREAMERS, of course, is that Blockbuster doesn't carry NC-17 films. This policy is why cheap R movies who want to throw in more nudity have an unrated version, as BB will carry those. Pure hypocrisy.

"Along the same lines, one of my pet peeves is Hollywood not meeting with the newspaper press to advocate the carrying of advertising for NC-17 films. Yes, some NC-17 films will be a bit more risque but it will give a more accurate description to many R films that should be nudged up a notch in classification. PG-13 was added to reduce the broadness of PG films and NC-17 should do the same for R-rated movies, however, no one is making any effort to make it work.

"Unfortunately, people learned the wrong lesson from SHOWGIRLS. Its failure was taken as proof that an NC-17 movie can't make money. However, the movie had a nice opening weekend, if I remember correctly. It bombed from there on because it stunk, not because it was NC-17." -- Paul Smith, Vice President, Gallagher Captive Services, Itasca, IL.

Wells to Smith: I figured Blockbuster was the reason for the DREAMERS decision, but for some bizarre reason the Fox Video publicist I spoke to last week didn't want to cop to this.