King Arthur is a different take on the legend of the Knights of the Round Table, setting us in 5th century Britain and the last remnants of the Roman Empire. This isn�t your great-great-great-great-great grandparents� romanticized Camelot. For one, I never heard the word �Camelot� mentioned, which is just as well because it would just invite more Teddy Kennedy jokes.

Now this bit I liked. Why not give a different spin on a common tale? But I heard someone call the movie the �true story� behind the legend. Um, if a story is fictional in the first place, how can you re-imagine a fairy tale? You�re just imagining it. Or am I being argumentative?

	Come back or I shall taunt you a second time!

Among the most important distinctions, Arthur himself is Roman, and the Knights work is servitude for Rome after their countrymen were mostly wiped out during the empire�s conquests. Merlin is still around, but there's no magic to his method.

Director Antoine Fuqua is big on gritty, so expect plenty of coarse words and dark sets. See his previous award-winning directorial effort, Training Day, for an example. Of course, these were the Dark Ages, so one might not expect a happy-go-lucky Disney-esque world of chivalry and splendor.

Arthur is also a Jerry Bruckheimer film, meaning there�s plenty of action and fire. He could make a film underwater, and still manage to find a way to incorporate flames and explosions. It seems lately we've seen a million of these hand-to-hand bloody swordfight battles. There's no new ground being broken in any of the action scenes.

Keira Knightley reprises her superheroine role from last year�s Pirates of the Caribbean - also a Bruckheimer flick - as Guinevere: Warrior Princess, once again slaying men three times her size while the best knights in Britain fall around her.

At the risk of being called an even worse sexist pig than before, let me say that it is ridiculous. I accept that a great female warrior heaped pain on the Romans in Britain, and don�t expect Guinevere to take up knitting and accept being the damsel in distress, but let�s get real folks, this machismo-ization of women in big films is getting to be a bit much. I know that Knightley is one of the few recognizable names in this movie, but to put her up front on the movie poster is like putting Keira-clone Natalie Portman up front in Star Wars Episode III. Sure, she�s vital to the story, but not what the audience is coming to see.

Such preening does a disservice to Clive Owen as King Arthur, who might be a little more important, seeing that the entire flick is named after his character. Call me old-fashioned, but that used to provide top billing. Owen�s a stud, with a great voice, and wields Excalibur like a pro, even if this time he wasn�t given it by some moistened bint in a lake. You might remember Owen from his brief bit as an assassin in The Bourne Identity, and I don�t remember his role in Gosford Park.

You are forgiven if you made Monty Python jokes throughout the movie, since obviously Holy Grail ruined us on any proper interpretation of the Arthur legend. If there aren't any nasty French (but I repeat myself) tossing farm animals over castle walls or minstrels eaten, then what's the point?

I can answer my own query. This story is always worth the effort since there's no doubt as to why it has lasted these many centuries. Drama, intrigue, romance and action intersect to form an epic worthy of many interpretations.