A Knight's Tale

"He will rock you."

2001 2h 13m EN

👍

6.9

SOLID

🍅

60%

FRESH

😬

METACRITIC

⭐

IMDB

★6.9TMDB · 3,528🍅60%Rotten Tomatoes●56Metacritic★7IMDB · 218,004

AdventureDramaRomanceAction

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

William Thatcher, a knight's peasant apprentice, gets a chance at glory when the knight dies suddenly mid-tournament. Posing as a knight himself, William won't stop until he's crowned tournament champion—assuming matters of the heart don't get in the way.

“He will rock you.”

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Where to watch · US

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Cast

Heath Ledger
William Thatcher
Rufus Sewell
Count Adhemar
Shannyn Sossamon
Jocelyn
Paul Bettany
Geoffrey Chaucer
Laura Fraser
Kate
Mark Addy
Roland
Alan Tudyk
Wat
Bérénice Bejo
Christiana

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Brian Helgeland
Writers: Brian Helgeland, Dan Sweetman
Languages: English
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Mid-budget at $65M — the now-extinct middle tier of Hollywood.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

25 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Brian Helgeland, shot by Richard Greatrex. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Carter Burwell. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Kevin Stitt shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Heath Ledger and Rufus Sewell and Shannyn Sossamon carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "He will rock you.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt0183790 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Brian Helgeland directs. Richard Greatrex behind the camera. Carter Burwell scores. Kevin Stitt cuts. Profitable at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Mid-budget at $65M — the now-extinct middle tier of Hollywood.
225 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.
3Directed by Brian Helgeland, shot by Richard Greatrex. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
4Original score by Carter Burwell. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
5Editor Kevin Stitt shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6Heath Ledger and Rufus Sewell and Shannyn Sossamon carry the top of the cast.
7Marketing tagline: "He will rock you.".
8IMDB entry: tt0183790 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
9Classified under 15 themes, including "london, england", "poetry", "rivalry", "sword fight".
10Released under 12 different titles around the world.

The technical file

Cinematography: Richard Greatrex
Original score: Carter Burwell
Editing: Kevin Stitt
Production design: Tony Burrough
Costume design: Caroline Harris
Makeup / hair: Pebbles Day
VFX supervisor: Tim Burke
Sound: Jeffrey J. Haboush
Stunt coordinator: Allan Graf
Runtime: 133 min · 2h 13m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $65,000,000
Box office: $117,487,473
Return: 181% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): PG-13
IMDB: A Knight's Tale (2001)
Rotten Tomatoes: 60% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 56/100
IMDB rating: 7/10 · 218,004 votes
MPAA: PG-13

Awards

4 wins & 13 nominations total

Also by

Brian Helgeland

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

Kamurai2020-07-27
★ 8/10
Great watch, will watch again, and do recommend. What a fantastic cast: I honestly don't know if you could have cast it better. Just thinking about Alan Tudyk, Heath Ledger, and Shannyn Sossamon makes me smile. Everyone plays their roles fantasticly, taking their stock characters, and spinning the writing to the 9th degree: the jerks are hate-able jerks and I can't help but love the leads and supporting characters. Part of what makes this movie disctinct is that they forces some modern (for the time) music into it when it very did not belong with medieval England / Europe. There are several scenes where if you squint, you could mistake the movie for "10 Things I Hate About You" or some other teen rom com of that time period. Fortunately they found a way to balance the jousting content with personality stories, which are by far more entertaining, but unless you're Kevin Smith, you can't exactly cut jousting out of a movie set in competitions for jousting. This is a fun movie with some positive messaging in it about women and class rights, please give this a go.
GenerationofSwine2023-01-12
★ 10/10
My dad, rest his soul, really liked this and at the time it came out I was a pretentious college student that had forsaken all things fun and couldn't understand what my father could possibly like about it. And now I'm living in a world where someone makes a tweet with the president's head morphed onto Rocky Balboa's body and people are freaking out and screaming "How am I supposed to take it, if not totally literally!" And I'm sitting off to the side, mumbling that it was just a joke, and seeing my old self that hated A Knight's Tale reflected in those people and thinking "I was a real humorless prig for about four solid years, thank every god that has ever been worshiped that I grew out of that." When I first saw it I thought the part where the smith added the Nike swoosh to the armor was horrible because, well, I was pretentious and took life far too seriously.... blatant product placement!... sweatshops!...child labor!.... Corporatism! Whatever! And now that said phase in my life has melted away, it's just a joke and honestly kind of a cute one. And then the same can be said about Chaucer.... and literary genius, how dare they slander such a.... and now that I'm older he was absolutely the best part of the movie wasn't he? Classic rock music in movie about the dark ages and... pandering... unrealistic... blah, blah, blah, and now that that ill informed phase in life wore off, it works on multiple levels and most surprisingly they succeed in using it to make you laugh. I guess the point is that now that I learned to actually enjoy things and not take everything so seriously, so literally, and understand a joke is just a joke, it's a super fun and hysterical comedic romp and to watch it is to love it.