Director Marco van Belle
Staring Kirk Barker, Stefan Butler, Nigel Cooke
Rated M
Score 5/6

A young Celtic warrior and a hermit wizard must unite to defeat an evil druid.

With the upcoming release of King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword directed by Guy Ritchie, I suppose it’s only fitting that I review a movie with a different interpretation of Arthur and Merlin.

Given that the budget for this movie was supposedly around $3,000,000 could easily be dismissed as being ‘something nothing’ kind of movie and I will admit that I almost dismissed Arthur & Merlin as being something that was unwatchable because there seemed to be something off with how the dialogue was recorded in the first act. But I stuck with the movie and was glad that I did, because of the commitment of the actors to the movie.

There are a lot of instances with sword & sorcery movies of a smaller budget (the same can be said for Westerns and a couple other genres that don’t generally occupy the cinematic mainstream) when the actors ‘phone in’ their performances and the movie becomes the cinematic equivalent of watching a traffic accident. Though it should be noted the cast’s commitment to their role is there but the filmmaker’s overall concept for their movie things start drifting into the realm of unintentional comedy, and fortunately writer/director Marco van Belle did not fall into that trap. van Belle brought a different interpretation of Arthur and Merlin to the screen that probably hasn’t been seen in main stream movies, he had the beautiful English countryside to shot and magic that looked different to what has been popularized by the Harry Potter Franchise.