In the Flesh: A Knight's War

In almost every film I’ve ever reviewed, no matter how dismal, I’ve found some scintilla of beauty or vision, some idiosyncratic touch worthy of dissection or appreciation. You can spend half a review talking about a single genuine moment, a single beautiful shot or brilliantly realized effect. In A Knight’s War, Matthew Ninaber’s directorial debut, there is no such thread to cling to. Everything, every last trivial element, is not just bad, but executed with such a perplexing lack of both natural ability and professional acumen that it begins to feel almost like a bit. How could someone, even blind-firing every creative choice in every scene, not get one moment right just by pure chance? How do the production studios who funded this turkey keep their lights on? Why can’t any of the actors deliver lines like normal human beings?

It certainly doesn’t help that the dialogue is the most cack-handed and exhausting I’ve heard since Ahsoka was airing, an endless gauntlet of characters asking each other questions while the film spins its wheels, apparently unsure of its own reason for existence. Every exchange is stretched out to the point of attenuation. The scene in which Bhodie (Jeremy Ninaber) arrives in the underworld and strikes a bargain with the Keeper (Shane Nicely) takes a full four and a half minutes, during which time the Keeper holds out a necklace and Bhodie eventually takes it. Watching it feels like having your teeth pulled with needle nose pliers. Nicely does a more or less acceptable job as the uninspired Keeper, helped by his having the only speaking voice in the film that isn’t absolute nails-on-a-chalkboard awful to listen to, but Jeremy Ninaber is a dud’s dud, his every line read flat and robotic, his face inexpressive, his hair some kind of Party City wig. 

Indeed, A Knight’s War is chock full of props one can run down on Etsy with a few quick searches, from the half-assed Mouth of Sauron masks and makeup of the Witches to the corny skull helmet of the nameless warden. Nothing looks used or lived-in. The exterior shots are lifeless, sub-Windows 98 graphics deployed in service of forcing some sense of place through the film’s total inability to orient itself in space. The fight choreography is a thick, dry mulch of medium shots in which characters in virtually identical armor awkwardly swing their swords around. It’s hardly ever clear how characters move from place to place, or why, or when. The story is best described as what one might see in a promotional video game tie-in, except that this is the movie, and it has saved its imaginary spinoff the trouble of being terrible by going right ahead and doing that itself. I love film, I have spent my career approaching the work of independent directors with a lighter touch, and I can say without equivocation that A Knight’s War belongs in the toilet with the rest of the floaters.