FIRST KNIGHT (1995) ** How could an Arthurian film starring Sean Connery and Richard Gere be this lame? Much of the credibility is burned when Julia Ormond is presented as the third side of the love triangle; Roseanne Barr or Paul Newman would have been more easily believable. She's not ugly (Ormond) but she lacks the spiritual or aesthetic depth to leave her anywhere but hailing a cab after a one night stand with the great men, now recovering from a hangover. Also, while the story is a fine one, this particular screenplay feels like it's written by someone with atomic-level Harlequin Romance connections. Connery battles heroically against the flatlining film during several of his scenes but is inevitably interrupted by lesser talents demanding a dialogue-leaving his Camelot concession monologue as the only truly powerful moment of the entire 129 minutes. Gere is even more frustrating: rather than utilizing his immense acting skills he prances, poses, primps and profiles; a mere poster boy for frustrated middle aged women gasping when he makes a 10 point dive into the moat to save the princess. Some of this could have been salvaged if, for example, he would have stopped to comb his hair in the midst of battle. So what we end up with is talented actors without the lines they need wearing cool costumes within nice sets, striding purposefully forth to the accompaniment of bilious music, uttering unmemorable clichés and thinking how good they look about it. Probably not the stuff that inspired the great poets, or only some of it anyway.
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