The producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) are not the first names one would expect to be associated with a sensitive re-interpretation of the Arthurian legends. Which is probably why their King Arthur is an unashamedly revisionist action adventure in which Arthur (Clive Owen) is a homesick Roman commander, and his knights are Sarmatian cavalrymen press-ganged into 15 years of Roman service.

Merlin is the leader of the Woads, a tribe of blue-painted guerrilla fighters; and the Saxons (led by a fantastic, gruff Stellan Skarsgård) look like Megadeth’s road crew.

Someone, probably a producer, decided that since they had Keira Knightley playing Guinevere, it seemed a shame to put her in the kind of shapeless gown a virtuous queen might wear. Thus they have rebranded her as an Ancient Briton warrior princess, and she spends much of the film in woad and a leather bikini.

The action sequences are competent, but while the film might have been quite an enjoyable romp it is tainted by the fact that it has chosen to attach itself, like some parasitic worm, to the Arthurian legends. The expectations that many will bring to the theatre will be profoundly disappointed, as this film has as much to do with the myth of King Arthur as The Stepford Wives has to do with feminism.

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