SEAN Connery played the role of a professor obsessed with Arthurian legend in 1984's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; throughout Jerry Zucker's First Knight, in which he plays King Arthur himself, you constantly expect him to declaim in a rich Scots brogue: 'Balderdash!' First Knight mangles the myth in a misguided attempt to zoom in on the love triangle between King Arthur, Sir Lancelot (Richard Gere) and Queen Guinevere (the appealing Julia Ormond, last seen in Legends of the Fall). Why an American would drop into King Arthur's court is unexplained - with the result that he seems to be acting in a completely different film to everyone else.
First Knight is an odd picture, inexlicably directed by Jerry Zucker of Airplane fame.
Looking forward to a mediaeval romp akin to John Boorman's Excalibur - with the added attraction of Connery - it was perplexing to find Gere mincing around the forest with all the attitude of Clint Eastwood in a Sergio Leone movie, while back at Camelot the rest of the British cast were furiously 'thesping' away.
First Knight lacks a Merlin, a lady of the lake - even a sword in the stone! It consists largely of Ormond and Gere looking longingly at each other, with him making serial rescue attempts after she is repeatedly captured by the evil Malagant (Ben Cross).
Connery gamely delivers some corny prose about the meaning of life and admits Lancelot to the Knights of the Round Table, who look like people living near Pinewood studios rounded up for an afternoon's work.
Guinevere's betrayal is as wooden as it is certain; the sets are obviously computer-enchanced, and the natives of Camelot are inexplicably clean - nice costumes, courtesy of Nana Cecchi.
