FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

TheLittleSongbird Sword of the Valiant has one sole redeeming quality, and that is the ever charismatic Sean Connery, the material is beneath him, he has very little to do and the green costume and make-up looks ridiculous (in a sort of novelty value way though) but he brings dignity, menace and class to what he has and he was a lot of fun to watch.Unfortunately, that is it for the things that work. Miles O'Keefe is absolutely dreadful in the lead role, too pallid for a hero and the less said about his goofy and too 80s wig the better, and Trevor Howard and Peter Cushing (who were also incredibly talented performers) are shamefully wasted with badly written and underused characters that don't allow them to show off their acting strengths. It really does have to be one of the worst wastes of talent in the history of film. Also wasted are the locations, they are quite nice but one cannot appreciate them when the production is lit so drably, there is next to no sense of the Medieval period, the special effects at their absolute best are shoddy and when the photography is so disorganised and amateurishly uninspired.There is also one of the worst, cheapest-sounding and wildly out of place synthesised music scores in film, that would belong more in a very low-budget 80s cartoon rather than a Medieval fantasy adventure where a more rousing approach is needed, He-Man has been mentioned a few times and that isn't inappropriate. People can say all they want and say that a lot of 80s fantasy-adventure scores were of this nature, but how many other 80s fantasy-adventure film scores sounded this cheesy, with the exception of perhaps Hawk the Slayer? The childish, incredibly awkward-sounding and unfunny script (reminiscent of a rejected comedy), slapdash in editing and limply choreographed action, amateurish direction and lifeless and at times annoying characters are further problems, but it was the story that stuck out as particularly bad. There is no sense of time or place, it's very rarely exciting and very little of it makes an ounce of sense. Instead it reads of a series of scenes from different medieval tales cobbled together with no relevance to one another, giving it a disjointed at best and incoherent at worst feel.Overall, an awful film apart from Connery, and it would be high up in the list of films that wasted its talent the worst. 1/10 Bethany Cox

PeplumParadise This one finds Miles O'Keeffe, doing an acceptable impersonation of Linda Evans in Dynasty, as Sir Gawain, who is up against Sean Connery, doing an acceptable impersonation of a Christmas tree sprayed with green glitter, as The Green Knight. The nadir of the brief British medieval peplum cycle sparked by Excalibur, this is chiefly of note for marking the lowest career point for most of it's distinguished British cast (for O'Keeffe it comes in at about average). The entire budget must have gone to paying the cast, since around 10p was spent on the sets, costumes and script combined. Enjoyable in the way that a car crash attracts morbid curiosity, watched mainly with the mouth gaping wide.

Deusvolt Golan and Globus are known for low-budget "trying hard" spectaculars out to make money, not win awards so I was bit leery when I went to see this movie. To my surprise it turned out to be good. Some of my favorite British actors were in it like Trevor Howard, Peter Cushing and of course, Sean Connery. Golan and Globus were right when they insisted on Miles O'Keefe over Mark Hamill who was the choice of director Stephen Weeks. With Hamil, people would have unjustly compared this movie with Star Wars. And as it turned out, Hamill was a one-shot wonder (three shots, actually with the Star Wars Trilogy). I remember him starring in a cheap sci-fi flick the advertising for which was a Star Wars rip-off while the plot was a Terminator rip-off. It bombed of course. Miles O'Keefe did very well exuding youthful daring with self-deprecating humor.In any case, Arthurian legend purists need not grouse about the fact that Sword of the Valiant mixes the stories of Sir Gawain (the Green Knight story is his), Sir Owein (the Lady of Lyonesse) and Sir Percival (the encounter with a knight in red armor). It's like shooting three birds with one stone and should motivate people to read up on Mallory et al. Besides, the movie is really a merry mix of adventure, action, comedy and romance. In Filipino, we call this "halo-halo," literally "mix-mix" used to describe an iced dessert with sweet beans, custard, gelatin, roasted young rice, tapioca, coconut strands, banana, jackfruit and what have you. Gawain's relationship with Linet is suitably romantic and knightly (that is, chaste). The mysterious character Linet is aptly portrayed by Cyrielle Claire whose beauty is of fairy tale quality.Despite the daunting looks of the Dowager Lady of Lyonesse, she has a rollicking sense of humor. When Gawain slew the Black Knight in fair duel, he became the Lord Protector of Lyonesse. But that was not his only inherited duty as the Lady of Lyonesse coyly pointed out. You should hear the way she said it.Sean Connery is suitably menacing. Trevor Howard, as the almost senile King Arthur didn't have much time to act; likewise Peter Cushing but their presence lent weight to the film.

batzi8m1 Both the stories of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Owain a the Lady of the Fountain are classic remnants of an oral tradition more ancient than the French Norman Romances and 14th Century Welsh Mabinogion story collections, yet both thought these two stories worthy of retelling and recording in written form much like Tristan and Parzifal. And there's a good reason for it, obviously good enough reason to get the likes of Sean Connery, Trevor Howard, Lila Kedrova, and John Rhys-Davies to take part in this admittedly cheesy production. (The fact that this was a Golan Globus production should have been a clue to any movie fan.)The ancient Celtic bards had to memorize some 100 major stories and 200 minor ones to entertain the folks during those long cold winter nights. While Tristan and Parcival belong to the former, Gawain and Owain belong to the latter. These are ribald entertainments for light late night story telling entertainment much like a James Bond, or a cheesy B-Movie. In fact I have heard one professor of Medieval Studies refer to Owain as the James Bond of the Arthurian cycles. And the middle part of this film that deals with Lyonese captures the whole Bond formula (or I should say formula which Fleming followed) of impossible predicament (ala Dr. Evil's "No. Intend to set up an elaborate death and walk away assuming it happened."), narrow escape, beautiful damsel, daring do, hand to hand combat against impossible odds complete with tongue in cheek reparté.I loved the movie for what it was from the moment I saw Trevor Howard's aging Arthur acting line the mean spirited cranky old fart the Welsh triads depict (not the "boyish" one of the Gawain poem) , through Lina Kedrova's scary horny old widow queen, Rhys-Davis's Fontenbras playing with toy soldiers, and of course Connery's transcendental Green Knight. Sure I missed some of the original story elements of both stories - the fountain and the ogre with the giant club - and I hated that cheesy last scene with Linet that they added on the end of the perfect ending scene with the Green Knight. But this one captured the spirit of the older tales of the Mabinogion (from which we get the oldest Owain and the Lady of the Fountain) much better than the Saxon-Norman poetic retelling of the Gawain story. Ribald, cheesy, fun with a few moral lessons thrown in for "redeeming social value." In this film's retelling one gets a much better feel for the kind of story the bards might have told the assembled drunken retainers in the King's Hall on a late mid-winter night.I give it a 7 for capturing the spirit of the tradition (that Monty Python Holy Grail feel that one detractors here noted as though it were a bad thing) , great acting by the legendary actors in smaller parts noted above and the James Bond pulp fiction feel. I'm detracting points for the music, skipping the fountain/storm and the ogre/giant, and that dumb ending scene.(PS contrary to one reviewer's accusation that it looked like a back lot in Pasadena, these were real Welsch castles including Cardiff and the former Palace of the Pope in Avignion.)