The Green Knight (2021) Review

This film had plenty of buzz about it when it just disappeared off of the UK release calendar. But The Green Knight has finally come to Amazon Prime and I watched it today and here is my review for it. The premise of the film sees one of King Arthur's Knights sent on a quest to prove himself. 

Main Character  

Dev Patel plays the main character Gawain and he does an alright job. Patel is a really good actor and he does manage to show that here with a decent performance, but the issue is I never cared about the character and despite Patel clearly trying I just found him quite unlikeable. You spend the majority of the film with this man and I guess I never felt a real connection with him and it just bought down my entire enjoyment of the film. 

Supporting Characters

There are some big names in this film, Alicia Vikander and Joel Edgerton are the best of the bunch. It's not there best work but they deliver some good moments and the film became more interesting once they were given more to do in it. The rest of the cast offer little whether it be Sean Harris as the king or some of the B list MCU actors such as Barry Keoghan and Erin Kellyman who get little to work with. 

Story

The story actually does some interesting things at the end, it isn't an easy watch for sure. You have to work out what is going on, but the last 15 mins or so are fascinating and it feels like with a better film it would be a perfect ending. But the rest of the film is just a bit strange and unfocused, as he meets people on his journey it is just too broken up and confusing. It really tries to make this a really deep film, but I think it just went too far and gave pretty much nothing definitive on screen and made it all open to interpretation which makes it a very hollow experience. 

Script

The script is just nothing, as I said above, the majority is made to be open to interpretation which just leads to a lot of big words that mean nothing. The drama fails to deliver and this is a very humourless affair. 

Style 

Easily the best part of this film is the visuals and score, they are literally incredible. If I was just rating these two factors this film would be a 10/10 but there are way too many other issues. A big one being the pacing of the film, it just drags a lot. This isn't an action or fantasy action film and it never really picks up the pace with it feeling like a slog. 

Overall

Overall, The Green Knight is a below average really disappointing film. With all the build up I was excited to finally watch The Green Knight but it just over-reached and tried all these wacky ideas with a weak execution. 

Rating - 4/10