( Note: This conversation contains major spoilers.)

WHO:	Mixed Reviewers Jill Cozzi and Gabriel Shanks
WHAT:	A meeting-of-the-minds over a steaming hot cup of New York's finest
HOW:	Cookies, cake and coffee
WHERE:	The Green Kitchen at The Galaxy Complex in Guttenberg

JILL: Just about. Did I mention it's got Clive Owen. On a horse. Wearing chain mail.

GABRIEL: We're both really big fans of Clive Owen. And we love these big period epics. And Arthurian legend is, for me at least, something I really enjoy. But surprisingly, we didn't walk in with enormous expectations for the movie.

JILL: I think the name "Jerry Bruckheimer" automatically sends up a red flag. And the advance buzz on it was not terribly good.

GABRIEL: There's also the director...Antoine Fuqua, who directed Training Day fer crying out loud.

JILL: He's definitely an unlikely choice. And another problem is that John Boorman's Excalibur is, for me, the quintessential Arthurian movie. I wasn't sure if anything could possibly live up to that.

GABRIEL: For my money, the ultimate Arthurian movie is Camelot. {Jill laughs directly in Gabriel's face.}  Yes, Excalibur's a good movie, I had my problems with it, but whatever...regardless, we can agree that there are a number of indelible portrayals of Arthur in books, in movies...

JILL: The Arthurian myth is the ultimate archetype. Every sword and sorcery fantasy epic is related in some way to this particular story about this particular knight.

GABRIEL: And that's what is so interesting in KING ARTHUR -- it strips away almost everything you just mentioned. It strips away the sorcery, it strips away the fantasy, it strips away the magic. It is Braveheart Arthur.

JILL: It certainly de-glamorizes everything.

GABRIEL: It demystifies.

JILL: It demystifies the Arthurian legend more than any film since Monty Python and the Holy Grail, because this king does in fact have shit all over him.

GABRIEL: (Laughs.) It almost invents a new mythology to replace the magic. Excalibur, for instance, is not a magic sword that Arthur pulls out of a rock; instead, it's his father's sword that he recovers to defend his mother. Fuqua and (screenwriter) David Franzoni really invented a completely separate backstory for Arthur and these knights, coming out of the Roman Empire and some new archeological hints at what was going on in the time period. It was interesting, because taking out the magic sets up different dynamics. One thing that remained however, and is even stronger in fact, is the struggle between pagan and Christian ideology.

JILL: That struggle is much stronger than I expected it to be. Arthur is a bridge between the pagan era and the Christian era; in Excalibur in the scene where he marries Guinevere, it's very much a split with Merlin and the pagan tradition...and you see where that gets him. Here in KING ARTHUR, it's exactly the opposite. Arthur starts out as a devotee of the Christian tradition, and moves to a more pagan spirituality as he becomes disillusioned with the corruption of the early Church. Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church take a real beating in this movie; it'll be interesting to see what happens when word gets out.

GABRIEL: The film really makes an argument against religious absolutism, against the idea of divine providence, against the prideful righteousness that was part of Christianity at the time...and, as you're pointing out implicitly, of modern-day Christianity in the United States. There is this Christian dogma that is running rampant through secular life. I don't think it'll be hard for people to see that parallel.

JILL: There hasn't been a whole lot of outcry about it, because there hasn't been a lot of buzz about this film...especially in a summer that has Fahrenheit 9/11 for people to chew on. Yet this film is, in a lot of ways, much more of a threat to the establishment than {Michael} Moore's film is, because it takes this legendary character, the myths of whom really do create a line of demarkation between the pagan and Christian eras in Western culture, and has him learn that the Church is just a bunch of hypocritical old men.

GABRIEL: What other things did you see in the film...and in its politics? I saw a modern feminist influence in Guinevere...

JILL: She's become this...Amazonian...warrior...

GABRIEL AND JILL: ...PRINCESS!

{Both laugh.)

JILL: There's really no getting around it. I'm not really sure what the point of her costume is, because Kiera Knightley, who has no hips and no breasts at all, is not a girl who looks particularly good in a skimpy costume. As I said to you during the film, Keira Knightley somewhat resembles Kate Winslet -- if Winslet were a crack whore. She's very pretty in a way, but it's just not a very sexy role. Guinevere is very strong and powerful, but I'm not sure this is a girl that boys would want to wake up next to her if they'd committed the sin of leaving the seat up, because she would kick their asses.

GABRIEL: She's definitely a buttkicker. But they don't really seem to know what to do with this revamped Guinevere. The famous love triangle -- Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot -- is hinted at, and then dropped.

JILL: It's barely hinted at...

GABRIEL: He does leer at her through the window...

JILL: Yes. But you don't get any sense of longing or love. He's leering and smoldering and glowering under his eyebrows, and she's kind of aware of the allure she has and the power it gives her, but it doesn't go anywhere. And at the end, her feelings over that come out of left field.

GABRIEL: There are some major changes in the storyline everyone knows. You know, if I were Roeper and you were Ebert, I'd be giving this a qualified thumbs up for KING ARTHUR. But thirty minutes into the film, I didn't think I would feel that way.

JILL: It has a very strong second hour.

GABRIEL: It has a very weird exposition, though.  That odd Lancelot-as-a-child sequence?

JILL: And a lot of voiceover narration. When a movie starts with voiceover narration, unless it's the Lord of the Rings, it's usually a sign that they don't know how to tell the story.

GABRIEL: We don't get to spend any time with the Knights of the Round Table, really. I think it was 45 minutes into the movie before I knew who was who, and who everybody was. And since we never really get to connect with them as individuals, it isn't really until the end of the film that we have a sense of who they are and how we feel about each of them. I guess Ray Winstone's performance, as Bors, will be the most endearing to the audience, because he's both loveable and the comic relief. The others are sort of pouty pretty boys.

JILL: Except for that strange looking one, who takes up with the young boy...I'm not quite sure what that's all about...{Laughing}

GABRIEL: You're going to mislead all of our readers, lady!

JILL: Come on, where'd that come from?  Or is it just to show that he's just a scary looking dude with a heart of gold? Except you've already taken care of that with Ray Winstone, who's becoming one of my favorite actors. I mean, here he's doing the funny fat man role AND the brute with a heart of gold, but he makes it work.

GABRIEL: Well, they're showing us that they all have a vulnerable side. If we're going to be modern and show that women can kick ass, we have to show that men can be vulnerable, right?  This KING ARTHUR is really a product of its times. This is not about magic saving the day. This is not a love story.  This is about triumphing over your enemy. It's made for a post-9/11, Iraqi-war audience.

JILL: I find it so interesting that all of these movies with warlike tendencies conceived after 9/11 are all so profoundly ambivalent about war.

GABRIEL: How do you see this one being ambivalent about war?  I'm not saying that it's not, but...

JILL: Well, for one thing, the good guys die. And it's clear from the beginning that these warriors don't want to do this...they want to be free to go home and be with their families. There's no glory in this war. It's not like the Pelennor Fields. And speaking of the Pelennor Fields -- I know I keep saying it, but there seems to be this ghost that hovers over every one of these battle scenes now. In a world without The Return of the King, Clive Owen's big speech to his men would've been fine. But instead it was, by comparison, kind of like "Take me out to the ball game."

GABRIEL: It's funny...over the July 4th weekend, I caught a bit of Independence Day. And during the Clive Owen speech in KING ARTHUR, all I could think of was Bill Pullman's big speech about "we have to save our way of life, this is our independence day"...

JILL: It's the Henry V speech.

GABRIEL: It is! It's the St. Crispin's Day speech! And still...even noticing all of its debts to other movies, I was engaged in KING ARTHUR. It's probably due to casting really good actors. Clive Owen is a really good actor. Ray Winstone, Stephen Dillane, Stellan Skarsgard...

JILL: Well, let's not get carried away...

GABRIEL: Oh I liked him, he was so weary! I was consistently engaged. Some of the big battle scenes and big set pieces were gorgeous.  There's that fight on the frozen lake that is really gripping.

JILL: The shots of the flame-tipped arrows are very, very well done. In fact, they liked it so much that they did the scene twice. There weren't a lot of special effects in the battles, at least not the kind to make them simply bigger. There's that wonderful battle on the ice, which is something different, something we haven't seen a million times. Today, we're all so aware of CGI stuff, like in Troy. In KING ARTHUR, there's a lot of battle stuff that looks like an exhibition from a Renaissance Faire. When you see the making of The Return of the King, you learn that those thousands of soldiers are actually just 25 guys Photoshopped all over the place. Here, you see that it's really 25 guys.

GABRIEL: I kept thinking, "This movie wants to be Gladiator, this movie wants to be Braveheart." But it had enough originality that I could recognize its aspirations and still enjoy it on its own.

JILL: Yep.

GABRIEL: Let's talk about the performances a bit. And let's start with Clive. Clive in a cape on a horse. ....

JILL: Mmmmm.......Clive Owen.... Clive in a cape on a horse in chain mail. Does it get any better than that? But this is definitely the Clive Owen Is A Movie Star movie.

GABRIEL: If anyone had any doubts about whether he can anchor a movie, KING ARTHUR proves that he can.

JILL: We knew that already, but now others will see.

GABRIEL: From the first shot, you believe him. And it's not like he's trying to be noble like Richard Burton...he's just got presence. He's got regality.

JILL: And yet he's got a gritty blue-collar aspect as well.

GABRIEL: Like Russell Crowe in Gladiator, when everyone saw him and went, "Wow, who is he?" People may have the same reaction to Clive here, those who didn't seem him in Croupier or his other smaller parts. He's really good. Did you like any of the Knights more than others?

JILL: Well, Ray Winstone obviously. He's done a lot of really good work in small, unappreciated roles.  The one that Mary Ann over at The Flick Filosopher is going to kill me for is that I hated the one guy who...

GABRIEL: Horatio Hornblower.

JILL: Horatio Hornblower. Right.

GABRIEL: I agree. I think his real name is Ioan Gruffudd. The most un-Hollywood name on the planet.

JILL: And unpronounceable, too. Yes, this name that ensures you a limited career. There's nothing overtly wrong with him; he's a very nice looking young man. But he's just got that certain nothing.

GABRIEL: We talked about Clive Owen having presence and having bearing and having regality. Gruffudd doesn't have those qualities. He's a really nice kid, but...he's a kid. He doesn't have weight. No gravitas. He's not a bad actor, really...

JILL: He has no sex appeal.  He's handsome without being sexy. There's just nothing there. He's very quiet, but it's not a quiet that implies depth, it implies lethargy.

GABRIEL: If you look at the structure of KING ARTHUR, he's clearly supposed to be the second banana here...he's the one we're supposed to be watching when Clive is not on the screen. I don't think he really stands out, though. Ray Winstone stands out. In terms of attractiveness, both Joel Edgerton (who plays Gawain) and Hugh Dancy (who plays Galahad) are better looking. Gruffudd just blends into the background, even though he's Lancelot. I'm not sure that's the way it should be.

JILL: I don't know that anyone's ever known what to do with Lancelot. In Excalibur, that dork they had playing Lancelot [Nicholas Clay], he didn't really work, either. Of course that was a very dorky Arthur too, in the form of Nigel Terry.

GABRIEL: I realize it's a hard part. Who would you have cast instead?

{Long pause.}

JILL: It's a tough one. It's a problematic role.

GABRIEL: I can't think of anyone, either. Whereas Guinevere...I don't think she's hard to cast at all. The question is...why Keira Knightley?  I could name about ten actresses who would do better, I think.

JILL: She is the It Girl of the moment.

GABRIEL: She was in Pirates of the Caribbean...does that make her the It Girl?  Really?

JILL: She has a good agent. She was in Pirates, she's got that movie coming out with Adrien Brody, she's got a ton of stuff in the hopper, and she's got that Vanity Fair cover...which at least used to be the kiss of death for a young career; see also: Gretchen Mol.

GABRIEL: She's really young...I mean, Clive is almost old enough to be her father. It's a little creepy. And honestly, what's wrong with Julia Stiles?  What's wrong with Kirsten Dunst?  Reese?

JILL: Well, they're American, for one thing.

GABRIEL: But they can fake it.

JILL: If those play sequences in Spider-Man 2 are any indication of how well Kirsten Dunst can fakes an English accent...

GABRIEL: Well, okay. But she's been good in movies before. Crazy/Beautiful, Interview with a Vampire, even Bring It On.

JILL: The problem is that this is the Kate Winslet role, the Spunky English girl. But Winslet is pushing thirty at this point and is at an age where she needs more challenging material. And she's got two kids, so that kind of takes her out of the running for ingenue roles like this.

GABRIEL: I guess I just don't see what the rest of the world sees in Kiera Knightley. Even the first movie I saw her in, Bend It Like Beckham...that was really Parminder Nagra's movie; Parminder walked away with it.

JILL: And she knocked it right out of the park. The wrong girl became the star out of that movie.

GABRIEL: Enough kvetching about Keira. What did you think of Antoine Fuqua's work in KING ARTHUR?  An American director, an African-American director...definitely trying to go as far away from Training Day as possible.

JILL: I think he did a really good job. There were places in this movie that were crying out for a more visually proficient director like Michael Winterbottom. There were those scenic winter shots, and I thought of what Winterbottom did with The Claim. All things considered, though...I liked the way KING ARTHUR sometimes looks like a low-budget film. It doesn't feel like an epic blockbuster, it feels intimate and closer...and I like that. It has almost a community theater feel, in a good way. For a summer blockbuster, it's very stripped down.

GABRIEL: No one ever shaves except Clive Owen.

JILL: And they all have perfect teeth. Just like in ancient Greece, in Troy, they all have great teeth.

GABRIEL: Okay. Time to get the check. What's your summation for this film?

JILL: KING ARTHUR is not as bad as everyone has told you it is, but you have to leave out your preconceived notions.

GABRIEL: Including that one! You just said how bad it is.

JILL: I didn't say it was bad.

GABRIEL: You said it's not as bad as everyone has told you it is.

JILL: No, well, no, it isn't. But leave your ideas about Arthur at home.

GABRIEL: Sticklers for Arthurian legends are going to have a problem. It is a Hollywood blockbuster with better actors than one normally gets. For summer entertainment here in 2004, it's a good choice.

JILL: I don't even regard this as a blockbuster, because it doesn't feel big. It's not an effects-driven movie. It's a story-driven movie, it's a character-driven movie. If you want to see good performances and an interesting treatment of a story you think you know, it's a good choice. But leave your preconceived requirements at the door.

GABRIEL: Absolutely. I hate those darned things.