While not exactly in the same league as the visually dazzling "Excalibur" and saddled with cheap looking CGI effects, this Anglo-Italian co-production has quite a bit of fun finding a direct path from the fall of Rome to the birth of Arthurian legend.

Though it's never wise to underestimate the power or universal appeal of Rai's cleavage and lustrous hair, that's about all that sets the doggedly mediocre The Last Legion apart from every other sword-and-sandal epic about the origins of Camelot.

When a movie wants to be sold as a spectacle, it had better deliver something more spectacular than this.

Not as bad as it sounds nor as good as it might have been.

The film is nothing to be ashamed of (especially if you're Kingsley). But it's as if everybody involved knows what the deal is.