Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1984)

The Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight is given a nice big screen adaption with movie Tarzan Miles O'Keeffe playing the earnest young Gawain with Sean Connery as his formidable adversary. That the film does not follow the medieval poem will offend purists, but that won't count with the mass audience.It's the New Year at Camelot and in the midst of the celebration and libation King Arthur remarks how the Knights of the Round Table have gotten soft. No sooner than a mysterious Green Knight arrives at the court and offers a game. With a giant ax he's wielding he offers any one of them to strike off his head, but if he survives he gets a return shot at their necks.The older more experienced knights are skeptical and get nothing but scorn from Sean Connery. But eager young squire Gawain accepts the challenge.What a surprise O'Keeffe gets when after striking off Connery's head with one whack, Connery picks up his own head and places it upon his body seemingly unscathed. O'Keeffe is ready to honor the terms of the wager, but Connery feeling sorry for him as he hasn't really lived and tasted life gives him a year to do so. And a riddle to solve and he'll forego the decapitation.The King gives Gawain his knighthood and a squire of his own and they have enough adventure to fill up the rest of the running time of the movie. Sword Of The Valiant is grand old style entertainment that fills the big screen with adventure and a little romance. O'Keeffe packs a lot of living in as he awaits his appointment with Connery.Trevor Howard plays King Arthur in appropriate regal fashion and Sword Of The Valiant is a fine film with all three stars acquitting themselves well.

I was practically speechless after I saw this film. I just couldn't decide whether I had periodically napped throughout the entire film or if the film really was that much of a mess. The scenes didn't connect with each other, the plot didn't seem to go anywhere or if it went it went to the wrong direction, the acting was awkward, the characters had no defining characteristics, the overall goal of the protagonist had no impact... I had no idea what I was watching most of the time.What I could gather was that there was this knight, played by Miles O'Keeffe, who got curse by another knight, this one mystical in nature and played by Sean Connery, and he had to walk the earth for a year in some sort of spiritual enlightenment quest. Or something, I don't know, the movie never explained just why this knight went on his quest other than that he was forced to by Sean Connery's character. And that's this movie. Something always happens, sure, but the viewer is rarely sure just what actually happens or why. And the why is what bothers me the most. I was so confused while watching this movie as nothing was ever explained, established or settled. The knight just travels from one place to another and something happens. And by the movie's finale I didn't even care anymore. I just wanted it to end.To the movie's credit I must say that I actually enjoyed Sean Connery's character. His Green Knight had very little motives behind his actions, other than 'why the hell not', but Connery applied his usual charisma to his performance and to a degree it works. The opening scene where he rides to the castle is actually very unsettling and bizarre, but in a good way. But then we rarely see him again, which is a shame because he's one of the few things that work in this film. And yeah, I guess that the settings and costumes are just fine and nice to look at, but they hardly make up for the non-existent story.So yeah, don't see this one. It's not worth it, not even in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way.

This movie is perhaps even more campy than "Conan the Barbarian" but it's also a lot worse.For an adventure movie it's way too boring. The action and sword-fights look pretty lame and poorly edited. On top of that, there are simply too few action moments within the movie.You can never get yourself to care for any of the characters. Characters just come and go in this movie. Way too many. There is no consistency in the story. Every character is in it for like 5 minutes and than disappears out of the story again and the next character get introduced. This is a sort of approach that is common for adventure movies but in this case they simple just overdid it.The story is very simple. The way the story progresses is just incredible bad and disjointed. It doesn't care that it just doesn't make much sense. The story heavily relies on its adventurous/traveling elements but those moments are done so incredibly bad in the movie, that the entire movie becomes a bad one, that at times is a real drag and annoying one to watch. The movie tries to conceal how bad it is by putting in humor, to make this seem like a comedy but it doesn't fool me, or prevents me from seeing how incredibly bad this movie is made and constructed.Amazing that so many well known, respected actors agreed to make an appearance in this movie. I'll admit, the only reason that I ever wanted to see this movie was because it featured Peter Cushing in one of his last film roles. Besides Peter Cushing, the movie also features Sean Connery with glitters, Trevor Howard, Ronald Lacey and John Rhys-Davies. Hope they still enjoyed themselves. I surely didn't enjoyed them!The movie is good looking in a campy sort of way, with simple looking sets and costumes. The atmosphere is made even more campy by the horrible '80's synthesizer music. My head nearly exploded! Also Miles O'Keeffe performance make this a campy one. Apparently his voice got even dubbed by Peter Firth. Perhaps to conceal his bad delivery of lines? O'Keeffe is best know for playing Tarzan in the huge flop "Tarzan, the Ape Man", with Bo Derek.A really bad movie in its sort and simply not worth watching.3/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Poor costuming,Bad acting,Some OK sets,and Lame plot.Not representative of the Rennaissance in it's lack of accuracy.The fantasy portion can't even begin to pull you into the story. Bad wig on Gawain. Overall the worst movie I have seen in a very long time.All I can say is Sean Connery must have needed money very badly to act (if you can call it that) in this monstrosity. Don't waste your time!