The Green Knight review round-up: Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander's classic drama is a 'thought-provoking trip back in time'

The story of The Green Knight is inspired by the Arthurian legend about Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur, who accepts a challenge from a mysterious Green Knight. The film, directed by David Lowery, sees Dev Patel in the role of Sir Gawain. Actor Ralph Ineson plays the Green Knight, Sean Harris stars as King Arthur and Alicia Vikander as Esel. Here’s a review round-up of the film Deadline: Spinning off from the poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Lowery has shortened the title and turned it into a cinematic journey to remember…Fans of epic tales like Lord of the Rings will find themselves transfixed with this intelligent and thought-provoking trip back to that time. The Guardian: That this eye-popping visual bounty would be a mere side attraction attests to how much movie Lowery jam-packs into two hours, the untamed gorgeousness easing us through the early-Christian arcana, tangled personal development, and occasional formal experiments with time. To disguise a film so artful and boldly uncommercial as mass-market entertainment for those still hurting from Game of Thrones’ conclusion – there’s your act of heroism. IndieWire: Surreal, stoned, and glistening with a layer of heavy metal realness, David Lowery’s medieval adventure is a chivalric romance for the ages. The Hollywood Reporter: An otherworldly Arthurian legend that owes as much to The Seventh Seal as to Excalibur, David Lowery’s The Green Knight is a dreamy mood piece that retells the classic hero’s journey as a hypnotic tale steeped in dark magic and supernatural horror. Time: There is no lettre flambée, specifically, in the late 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. But it’s part of the embroidery writer-director David Lowery uses to fill out his extravagant unicorn tapestry of a movie, The Green Knight, a detail that makes this ambitious adaptation feel both lived-in and magickal, with all the self-aware grandiosity that superfluous ancient k implies.