Sword and sorcery sagas have got their work cut out after Lord of the Rings raised the bar for the genre.

The result is that rich action feasts now look pretty thin gruel when pitted against Peter Jackson's magnificent trilogy.

This is exactly the problem afflicting this re-interpretation of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Clive Owen - equipped with a gleaming new set of pearly whites - hasn't got the charisma to capture the soul of the fabled monarch.

He's not helped by a bunch of knights whose Cockney consonants (Arfa!)sound like a coach party of Pearly Kings dragged out of the Queen Vic.

Relocating from the Cornish coast to the Lake District, Arfa, a servant of Rome, is within grasp of being awarded his freedom after 15 years.

However, the Romans are pulling out of Britain and have one last task - the rescue of a family from the jaws of invading Saxon hordes.

This is a determinedly low-powered action adventure with Arfa's battle scenes distinctly thin-blooded and small scale.

There is one terrificly edited setpiece - an ambush on a frozen lake (King Arthur on ice anyone?) but the rest play like the AGM of the Sealed Knot.

Ray Winstone raises a few laughs as an over-fertile warrior but the Anglo-Saxons - inexplicably subtitled - look more like the Newbury by-pass protesters.

Most of Keira Knightley's screentime as Guinevere appears to have ended up on the cutting room floor while evil Cerdic (Stellan Skarsgard) sounds like he's ridden in from Los Angeles.

For cinemagoers familiar with the derring do of Middle Earth, this will seem a very minor skirmish. Woad is me.

Tim Evans