A Knight's Tale ( 2001)
Review by M.B. | Foreign Films Made in Czech
A Knight's Tale (2001) This is an ordinary story of a "rags to riches" case. William Thatcher (Heath Ledger) was born a lowly peasant, but wished to become a knight to be allowed to join in joust tournaments and become champion of this sport. From pure boldness (out of starvation/poverty), he faked his royal background in order to do just that when his master dropped dead suddenly. He gathered support from a group of faithful and good friends who did their best to support him in maintaining the facade. With hard work and determination, William Thatcher won many tournaments and became well known as Sr Ulrich. His real identity was found out by Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell), who had been jealous with Sir Ulrich's success since the beginning. Facing execution, he was saved by Prince Edward, who jousted with him in the past and admired his noble spirit greatly. Not only saving William Thatcher, Prince Edward decided to knight him for real (on behalf of the king of England!).
Though the plot was simple, the finish product was quite great with a beautiful cast, costumes and everything else. The director managed to stir the movie up a bit, by using rock music quite freely everywhere, making it hilarious. For example, at the beginning of the movie, the piece "We will rock you" (Queen) was used with noble ladies and gentlemen of the 15th century as well as peasants, everyone in ancient costumes, happily clapping and tapping along with the music).
Among the cast, Rufus Sewell was great in his "evil" role: quite charismatic and attractive and at the same time ruthless and dangerous). Heath Ledger and his "Lady Jocelyne" (Shannyn Sossamon) were pleasant to the eyes, especially with their interesting and constantly changing costumes. It was a pity that they did not put more twist into the plot. For example, they could have let the beautiful blacksmith to have a more important role in William Thatcher's life at the end (but that would mean other twists: William Thatcher found out that he was not really in love with Lady Jocelyn, but they happily remained friends; William Thatcher got knighted, but realised that he was in love with the beautiful blacksmith; the evil Count Adhemar turned good after being saved by William Thatcher, and ended up with Lady Jocelyn, etc).
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