Ignore the film, read the book

Rating: 3/10 (30 December 2007)

A lot of criticism is geared towards believability (such as the finding of the sword), historical accuracy (length of swords, dress) and a whole host of other things.
As per my title, read the book by Valerio Massiomo Manfredi, it was written and published before the film. It is a good read (as re his other books), characters are developed well, plot is believable and you can get engrossed.
It is in other words, everything the film is not.
The script does contain the bare bones of the books plot, but the whole journey across Europe to the shores of Britain is missing. Scenes are disjointed and badly edited, you get no sense of who the characters are and what drives them.
They had Sir Ben Kniglsey (doing a dodgy Welsh accent - supposedly to show some link between traditional legends that the Arthurian stories were Welsh in origin) yet the action is set in the far north of England. On reflection I am sure this will be one film he hopes doesn't come back to haunt him.
I certainly don't blame the actors, lets hope the screenwriter takes a long hard look at his material before putting it in front of another producer.
As to the the lengths of swords as has already been pointed out, Roman cavalry swords were indeed longer (watch Gladiator's opening battle scenes and note Maximus' sword!!!) In conclusion, read the book, it'll take you longer but at least it won't have been a waste of an hour and half of your life.