La espada del valiente

The Sword of the Valiant looks like an exciting film. It stars Sean Connery, Miles O'Keefe, Trevor Howard, Peter Cushing, Leigh Lawson and Ronald Lacey.... with a cast like that, you feel sure that it must be a big, expensive, epic-scale production. Furthermore, if the script was rubbish, then surely they wouldn't have been able to persuade so many top actors to appear in it. Armed with this sense of certainty that the film is going to be a good one, you sit down to watch it with a degree of eagerness. Only then do you realise what a terrible, terrible mistake you've made.....

Yes, The Sword of the Valiant is a stinker! It stinks to high heaven in fact! It marks a career low point for Connery, and is only slightly better than O'Keefe's most legendary bad film of all, Tarzan the Apeman (1981). The story follows O'Keefe (sporting a laughable blond wig) as he sets out to solve a puzzle set for him by the evil Green Knight. He has just one year to solve the riddle, and if he has not reached an answer after that time he will die.

The make up department emerge with some credit. They've made Connery's Green Knight look quite good. Other than that, the film is a failure on every conceivable level. The music is awful, the supporting performances are embarrassing, the script is amateurish, the pacing is tedious, the climax is dreary, even the hairdressers (!) have failed to do their job competently. If you insist on watching The Sword of the Valiant (and believe me, you'd be best advised not to) then prepare yourself in advance for one of the most stupefyingly inept experiences you are ever likely to put yourself through.

This is certainly a dodgy film on many levels, but it has some redeeming moments. Sean Connery is terrific as The Green Knight, he obviously has a heap of fun in the role and steals the show.

If you come across this film you could do a lot worse.

What can you say about a film that tries to emulate another film for the sole purpose of capitalizing on its runoff?

Not a whole lot.

"Sword of the Valiant" feels like "Excalibur's" evil twin brother. Boorman used green gels on his lights in his Arthurian film to accentuate the green in the wilderness of the dark ages, and to underscore another theme. "Sword of the Valiant" also lights its characters with green gels clipped over the lights, but probably only because Boorman did it in his film, because there's no real purpose for it here. Boorman's "Excalibur" had fog effects, Maximillian like armor for the knights, pitched fights on a variety of terrains, and bases its tale on the King Arthur legends. "Sword of the Valiant" does this, but with a cheap-budgeted feel.

The acting, for what it is, is hit or miss depending on the actor and/or scene. There's little in the way of high drama here, but the performances are certainly above B-movie quality. Yet even here it depends on the character. A couple of the female supporting cast, notably the antagonists, are horribly directed, as is the case with much of the film's performances. Miles O'Keffe does a pretty good job of portraying a young knight in search of adventure, but his character never really does anything beyond going through the motions of the plot. Sean Connery does a good job, as usual, though the glitter and mini antlers on his head were just too much. I don't know who decided to go with that scheme, but it's pretty silly. Fortunately we know it's Connery underneath all that, and his performance helps to take away the two rediculous facets of his costume. The stunning Cyrielle Claire gives a performance that is much like that of everyone else in this film; good, but somewhat flat due to lack of direction. Everyone gets the job done in the end, but no Oscars will be found here.

And, as has been mentioned, the musical score is one of the worst ever married to a film. It almost sounds like some public domain music I've heard pasted onto cheap 16mm documentaries. It's that bad.

But the worst thing about this movie is the cinematography. It's cheap, bland, uninspired, and just plain worthless. A lot of zooms are used, as are a lot of cheap edits from equally cheap angles. I might blame the cinematographer, but somehow I get the feel he was just doing this gig to get a paycheque. There's no real heart to the look of the film, and that's the real killer for this movie. For if it had been better shot, then some of the other negative qualities might've been mitigated.

The art direction is probably the one real plus for this film. Connery's antlers and glitter aside, the costuming is fairly good, and the locations, though not very well shot, are likeable, and also fit the overall feel of the film.

And for those of you laughing at Mile's O'Keefe's "page boy" haircut you should know that a page-boy was squire in training in a medieval court. Pages were young boys who ran errands and served both lords and ladies of a castle, learning manners and other skills that would serve them should they ever reach knighthood. Their hair was usually cut short with bangs all around. This is where the term "page boy haircut" comes from. The worst that can be said is that poor Miles was given a pretty bad wig. That and the hair was probably too long for the period. Otherwise it's fairly accurate.

For a knock off of a high budgeted production "Sword of the Valiant" does OK. In fact given what's presented the film could've been a lot worse, but a talented cast and good art direction can only take a B-movie so far, particularly one that's poorly shot. I first saw this film back in the 80's on HBO, and picked up a cheap copy of the DVD yesterday. The transfer, as can be expected, isn't all that good, even though it's MGM publishing the title. In fact the only real clean (non-grainy) image is on the trailer that comes as a bonus feature. Go figure.

It's worth a look if you have nothing else better to do, but don't expect too much from it. If you're a die hard fantasy or medieval film fan, then it should entertain. That and the Linet character is fairly easy on the eyes :-)

The old English tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is brought to the screen with a charming blend of action , imagination ,thrills , adventure , and tongue-in-cheek humor . The medieval legend of a supernatural chivalrous young squire who challenges the king's men to kill him . Being middlingly starred Myles O'Keefe as Gawain , Sean Connery as the Green Knight, and appealing Cyrielle Claire as Lynette ("The Lady of Lyonesse"). In Camelot on New Year's Day, King Arthur's court is waiting for the feasting to start when the king asks first to see or hear of an exciting adventure. At this a gigantic figure, entirely green in appearance and riding a green horse, rides unexpectedly into the hall. He wears no armour but bears an axe in one hand and a holly bough in the other . He insists he has come for a friendly "Christmas game": someone is to strike him once with his axe on condition that the Green Knight (Sean Connery) may return the blow in a year and a day . There appears Gaiwan (a wooden Miles O'Keefe) , a rookie knight in the court of King Arthur (Trevor Howard) who is sent out on a quest brought on by a challenge issue by the magical Green Knight . Gaiwan must solve a riddle in one year or die .

This flabby fairy tale adventure contains witchery , fantasy , cheesy special affects, stagy acting , surreal imagery and grimly marches . The picture has good settings , as thick rolling fog , deep forest , dark castles and rocky seacoast ; this movie delivers on locations ; however , it results to be mediocre and a little bit boring . Connery can only be on-screen for a few scenes but he adds zest to his character , he steals the show as an ironic Green Knight . Ronald Lacey, who played the character Oswald, also played the same character, also called Oswald, in "Gawain and the Green Knight" which was made in 1973, and basically, it was the same movie, same actor, same role .

This lumbering film version of one of the Arthurian legends is badly done , as the motion picture was regularly directed by Stephen Weeks . Filmmaker Weeks was one of two young British directors to emerge in the terror field in the late sixties , the other , Michael Reeves died at 25 . He began his professional film career at age 17, directing a series of short films . He made his film cinema short film, 'Moods of a Victorian Church' (1967) at age 19, and his first cinema drama, a film set in the First World War in France '1917' . Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was Stephen's second picture at age of 22 and he realized other horror films such as ¨Madhouse mansion¨ or ¨Ghost story¨(1979) and adventure movie such as ¨Gawain and the Green Knight¨ (1973) also with Peter Cushing , Ronald Lacey , Murray Head as Sir Gawain and Nigel Green and its remake titled ¨Sword of the valiant¨ (1983) and not much of an improvement . Rating : 5/10 . Well worth watching but only for Sean Connery fans .

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance. It is one of the best known Arthurian stories, and is of a type known as the "beheading game". The Green Knight is interpreted by some as a representation of the Green Man of folklore and by others as an allusion to Christ. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel, it draws on Welsh, Irish and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an important poem in the romance genre, which typically involves a hero who goes on a quest which tests his prowess, and it remains popular to this day in modern English renderings from J. R. R. Tolkien, Simon Armitage and others, as well as through film and stage adaptations. It describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who challenges any knight to strike him with his axe if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him with his blow, at which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honour is called into question by a test involving Lady Bertilak, the lady of the Green Knight's castle.The poem survives in a single manuscript, the Cotton Nero A.x., which also includes three religious narrative poems .

I honestly believe this may be the worst thing, not film, thing ever viewed through the eyes of a person. I thought i was crying but actually my eyes were just bleeding. Please by a copy just to later burn it, Whatever you do don't watch it...Not even as a joke. You may think "it might be funny to watch this train wreck? Dodgeball or any other half decent films are rented out. Why don't we get this out just for a cheap laugh? Look it can't be that bad Sean Connery's in it!" First of all yes he is, but he's green. Second, don't do it it's not fun. It's...It's just not right.

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