bookmark_borderKingdom of Heaven

Movie info from IMDB
Movie reviews from Metacritic

Orlando Bloom stars in this EPIC STORY, starting life as a blacksmith who turns out to be not only a Lord’s son but an amazing swordsman (can anyone say typecast?). The SWEEPING VISTAS are plentiful as are the STUNNING BATTLESCENES, all very big and impressive. I’ll stop with the shouting now, I think you get the picture.

Story wise it’s the old good versus evil thing again, and Romeo and Juliet is pulled into the equation too. Ohh yes, the backdrop is some religious nonsense from around 1100, something to do with Jerusalem, Crusaders, Saracens (not the rugby team), and a couple of hundred thousands Muslims. But that’s all by the by and on the whole the story does it’s best to stay out of the road.

Alternatively you could say that it’s the heroic tale of rags to riches, a lowly blacksmith who becomes the defender of truth, justice and the American way!!… or something, he may not have said it quite like that…

By now you’ve probably gathered that it didn’t make a great impression on me, and I should pause to correct that. Slightly. The cinematography is nicely handled, the effects, costumes and so on are all very well done, and the battle scenes are well executed and (and I’m guessing here) reasonably realistically bloody.

However it just never really grabbed me and made me care enough about the characters or the plight of Jerusalem to stop various random thoughts popping into my head, such as:

“What is it with Ridley Scott and these semi-androgenous woman, first Sigourney Weaver and now Eva Green… hang on.. was it Ridley that did Alien?? Or was that James Cameron? Or did Cameron do the second one?? Dammit, can’t remember…”

“What kind of speech is that, the rallying cry to an army of Christians in the 1100s is “COME ON!!!”… what is this? Saturday afternoon at races?”

“Crap, I bet that malteser melts…”

If you like your movies EPIC and GRAND and not too involving then I’d recommend this… it’s not a bad movie, but it’s long way from being a good one.