Kingdom of Heaven
Two and a half hours long. My first thought when I walked out of the cinema was 'I hope a Director's Cut version has a lot of extra scenes'. Why is this, I hear you cry? Or maybe you don't. No matter. I'm going to tell you anyway.
It's because there just didn't seem to be enough. Of anything. The introductory opening was clearly rushed and heavily edited. Orlando Bloom actually seems to be able to act reasonably well now, but we don't see enough of that either. Jeremy Irons as Tiberius. for some reason, I remember as giving an amazingly good performance, though I can recall him only having a few lines. He certainly did better than his effort in Dungeons & Dragons. I can only assume that he really hated that film and wanted to see it die.
With no further ado...onto hackneyed plot points, then. There are remarkably few. The 'servant is not really a servant and will spare your life later on' trick could be seen coming a mile away, and Orlando Bloom's character gets the girl at the end for no apparent reason. However, aside from these two (acceptable, in my view) descents into cliche, the storyline is kept relatively free of the predictable.
The siege scene could so easily have turned into Helm's Deep. It almost did. When Tiberius rode away with his knights before the siege began, I'm sure everybody who saw The Two Towers or King Arthur suddenly thought 'Aha, dramatic-intervention-at-the-crucial-moment time'. Didn't happen. The knight charged with protecting the city and its people surrendered at the end when faced with impossible odds. When was the last time you saw that happen?
Comparisons with the film King Arthur can be drawn almost too easily, so I will say this: Kingdom of Heaven is about as high above King Arthur in terms of quality as it is possible to be.
On the other hand, the romance subplot threaded through the film seemed tacked on and insubstantial, which was unfortunate considering the high calibre shown the rest of the time. Nobody in the audience cares about what happens to the princess/queen/whoever she was, since her character wasn't nearly interesting enough. No, really. Get back to the politics and warfare, please.
Incidentally, before I saw this film I heard repeated statements that it was stereotypical towards Muslims. And Christians. Considering that the Crusades actually took place (no matter the precise historical accuracy of the film itself), that religious fanatisism really was (and is) common and that the point of the film is that it's possible for everybody to live without killing each other...I'm not sure what people are complaining about.
Oh, I know, it should have been politically correct. Yes. Perhaps it could have been directed by Steven Spielberg. It would have ended up like those adverts from the Orange people.
FILM GUY : Okay, shoot. You've got ten seconds.
WRITER: Uh, it's about the Crusades. The fighting between Muslims and Christians over Jerusalem...
FILM GUY: Ooh, iffy. Woah there, slow down. I've got a better idea.
WRITER: Okay...
FILM GUY: How about the film starts with the armies of the Christians and the Muslims all living together in Jerusalem?
WRITER: But that takes out the p-
FILM GUY: And they fight over the new mobile phones available from the Orange shop!
As an aside, I would also like to express my appreciation for the subtle use of CGI. They hired one and a half thousand Moroccan soldiers as extras to make the armies look more convincing, according to the New York Times. And if you can't trust the New York Times, who can you trust?
I really want to give this film a high rating, but I can't put my finger on exactly why, since nothing really leapt out at me. On the other hand, this is my website. Anybody that disagrees can burn in hell.
Not on a scale of one to ten, therefore, I rate Kingdom of Heaven: royal
Oh, and in case you were wondering, apparently a multi-disc DVD release will have over an hour of extra scenes (from two hours and twenty-two minutes to three hours and forty minutes). I will be buying it on the strength of that alone.