A Espada do Valente

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.

After a very strong intro scene, the plot becomes a hodgepodge of childish gags. I would have preferred this to be "The Legend of the Green Knight and the Green Knight Only". Connery's chest hair alone has more charisma than the bodybuilder protagonist.

Even Sean Connery can't save this one (his performance is in my opinion the only redeeming factor in this movie): the movie lacks everything, there is no magick, the action is inferior, some scenes are of the kind that are involuntarily funny. Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight not unwatchable but rather a disappointing one. Exact rate: 3.5.

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 :-)

I thought the movie was entertaining. Sean Connery looked a little ridiculous as the green knight. I saw the movie as a love story between Sir Gawain, Miles O'Keeffe, and the Lady of Lyonesse, Lila Kedrova. It was amusing and cute.