Kingdom of Heaven Review
by Ryan Ellis (flickershows AT hotmail DOT com)June 27th, 2005
Kingdom Of Heaven
reviewed by Ryan Ellis
May 23, 2005
My Tagline---Killing and dying for fairy tales
You just can't make a decent movie about the Crusades anymore. The Monty Python gang already satirized the pomposity of these kinds of battle epics so thoroughly with their side-splitting 'Monty Python And The Holy Grail'. They've ruined it (gloriously!) for everyone else. To make a serious film about the Crusades is asking for ridicule. And since Ridley Scott and his cast & crew have made a dull-ass slug of a film and thereby asked for that ridicule, by golly, I'll be happy to oblige them.
Okay, let's play nice first and give Sir Ridley his due. He's been on a remarkable roll in the past half-decade, with big hits, such as 'Gladiator', 'Hannibal', and 'Black Hawk Down'. After a dismal run in the '90s that followed 'Thelma And Louise', his career took off again once the clock struck 2000. Scott has always been an F/X maestro and a world-class craftsman of action scenes. While those parts of 'Kingdom Of Heaven' are not very different than what you'll see in other recent bloody sword flicks, they ARE the highlights of this movie.
God knows that every scene of exposition is lousy. William Monahan's brain-deadening screenplay accomplishes nothing more than provide links from one fight to the next. Bad performances are the director's fault, but a large chunk of the blame also should go to a script that doesn't reach for anything beyond Dr. Philisms. No matter how pretty John Mathieson's sweeping camerawork is or how much the sound rumbles all over the theatre, epics can only avoid redundancy and thickheadedness if the writing sings. 'Kingdom Of Heaven' has all that light and shadow, sound and fury, and it signifies zippo.
As for Scott, he's never been an actor's director. That really shows here. Old pros like Liam Neeson (as Godfrey) and Jeremy Irons (as Tiberias) barely register and Orlando Bloom (as Balian) cannot carry this project by himself, although that's what he's asked to do. He's a boy playing a man's stupid game. Follow him into battle? I wouldn't follow Orlando Bloom into the supermarket. What happened to the likability and athletic derring-do we saw in 'The Lord Of The Rings'? He comes off as a glum little putz in anything not directed by Peter Jackson. [And don't get me started on how somebody should have kicked his cowardly ass in 'Troy'.]
There is a plot and it's based on actual people, if that means anything. Christians war with Muslims for control of the Holy Land in Jerusalem. Christians (led by Bloom) win some battles, Muslims win some. The finale takes place at the mighty wall of the city of Jerusalem (or was that Helm's Deep? Or the gates of Troy? Or the Alamo?) and many men die needlessly before it's all over. Okay, war is hell, so why fight? Who's right and who's wrong? Beats me. Nobody wants to offend Muslims these days and no filmmaker wants to make Christians look all that bad either (because they supply the mega-bucks to make these kinds of mega-movies). 'Kingdom Of Heaven' wusses out and calls it a draw.
The on-going war between the Christians and the Muslims has to rank up there near the top of the list of Top 59 Stupid Blood Feuds. This one seems to still be happening because they worship a different God. Or sometimes these feuds keep going forever because they worship the same God in different ways. Whee. I have no sympathy for any idiot who kills and dies for fairy tales. It might be easier to empathize with a cause on either side if the various warmongers in 'Kingdom Of Heaven' were memorable in the slightest. There are a lot of characters in this movie (many of them of the digital persuasion) and I didn't care about a single one of them.
I wanted to care about Eva Green, who plays Bloom's love interest and---as is melodramatic custom, it seems---the wife of Bloom's rival. She's a curvy delight, although her performance doesn't exactly light the world on fire. Fact is, if you're going to cast the busty star of 'The Dreamers' and give her a sex scene with Bloom, but NOT give us a good look at that magnificent body of hers, then you're just wasting your "R" rating. That rating IS earned by the sheer determination of the makeup department to spray as much blood around as possible. That's fine, but I regret that Miss Green didn't give us some el buffo.
All hope was not lost once Brendan Gleeson turned up. He's one of the best character actors working today and he has a juicy part as a troublemaking usurper to the Christian King. Gleeson was the jilted Menelaus in 'Troy'. If you were hoping he'd get back at Bloom for stealing Helen of Troy (as I certainly was), no dice. And if you thought it would be nice to see Godfrey stick around long enough to teach Balian (his illegitimate son) more than a few tricks, double no dice. All the interesting characters die too soon, including Edward Norton, who plays the Christian King Baldwin. He's got a bad case of leprosy, so we never see his face. In fact, I didn't know who was playing Baldwin until the end credits. Good actors they are, wasted they are.
Perhaps my pissiness is because of the exasperating coda. Without giving away too much, I'll say this---if you survive THAT hell, you don't go back for more! There's nothing rousing in this picture and it manages to be most depressing of all as it fades to black. All it shows is just how dedicated and noble and perfectly stupid the Christians were in clinging to their precious Crusades. It also proves they didn't learn a damn thing. But then again, when has mankind ever learned anything from past mistakes?
'Troy', 'King Arthur', 'Alexander' and now 'Kingdom Of Heaven' have wrung every last breath out of the Sword & Sandal style of filmmaking. The genre is dead and it needs to stay that way for a while---at least until somebody can write a script with 1 or 2 fresh ideas. It's appropriate that Ridley Scott's own Oscar winner ('Gladiator', natch) revived the genre a few years ago because now his latest picture has effectively ended it again. If you're thinking of labouring through nearly two and a half hours of 'Kingdom Of Heaven', take Monty Python's advice straight out of their own Holy Grail flick---"Run away!"
To crusade against me, write to [email protected] or
[email protected]
More on 'Kingdom of Heaven'...
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
