King Arthur

(Herald rating: * * )

Excalibur? The Lady in the Lake? Both consigned to the dustbin of mythology in this version, which pretends to be more authoritative than the Sword in the Stone tales that most of us grew up with.

Clive Owen plays the first head of the Round Table as Artorious, a half-British, half-Roman knight who's spent 15 years at war with other local tribes. When the Saxons invade Britain and the Romans push off, our hero will forge alliances to take on the invader in the name of democracy (um, err, better check the history texts on that one, lads.) Keira Knightley plays Guinevere as a young Margaret Thatcher in a leather bra, Merlin (Stephen Dillane) has nary a spell to cast, while Ioan Gruffudd gets to wave his sword about as Lancelot.

If this is history, it's boring. The legends were a helluva lot more fun. The DVD features a Director's Cut with an extra 17 minutes of gore that indicates the cinema version was cut about to ensure that it got a child-friendly rating certificate.

Blood On the Land is a once-over-lightly production feature hosted by the cast and crew, and a fair whack of behind-the-scenes footage. Director Antoine Fuqua provides an alternative ending — the downbeat one he wanted, in fact — and explains that producer Jerry Bruckheimer required him to use a weaker, friendlier finale.