Kingdom of Heaven
May 7, 2005
Rated: R Runtime: 145 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Ridley Scott is a master at turning what could be a pile of steaming poo into something great and Kingdom of Heaven is no exception. When I first saw the trailers around Christmas last year I thought they were re-making Gladiator with all the similarities, the only difference was the lack of an actor to play the lead. I know what you’re thinking, Kingdom does have an actor playing the lead, Orlando is the lead! Yes this is true but if you were one of the unlucky few to see Troy last year you know full well Legolas needs to stay in the background and look cool and not say a word, because the boy just ain’t got the chops! So needless to say I was pretty worried this ‘epic’ would be as crappy as Alexander, and my experience would be the only thing epic, meaning looooong and uneventful. Lucky for me and everyone else in the auditorium it was not. In fact it was quite cool.
Set in 1184 AD in Jerusalem, Kingdom is the story of the siege and ultimate surrender of Jerusalem to the Saracen King Saladin. But since it is a movie and not a documentary on the History channel we have to start our tale a little ways before that to make it more interesting, so here we go.
In a little village in France around 1184 lived a blacksmith named Balian (Orlando Bloom) who finds out that his real father is actually a Baron (Liam Neeson) that serves the King of Jerusalem (Edward Norton), and he’s come to bring his son with him to take his rightful place by his side. Balian refuses to go and decides to stay and mourn the death of his recently deceased wife and child. Content to stay and remain a lowly blacksmith Balian is provoked by the village priest when he taunts Balian with the fact that his wife was burning in hell and would never reach Heaven… She killed herself and therefore is unable to repent so there you have it. This leads to an excellent death gimmick for the evil priest… and our hero flees the scene intent on finding dear old dad and going with him to fight in the Holy Land for King and country.
Balian finds poppa and when the authorities of the village come to arrest him for the death of the priest, Godfrey and his knights defend the begotten son with their lives (including Qui-Gonn) so he can carry on the family name. Balian and the surviving knights go to the Holy Land to help maintain the peace between the Saracen Muslims and the Christians while trying to keep the King’s brother in law, Guy de Lusignan (Csokas) away from the throne while still protecting the kings sister Sibylla (Green). This was the sole responsibility of city marshall Tiberius (Irons), and by request of the king himself it becomes Balian’s as well.
Although I doubt mentioning the outcome above can be considered a spoiler due to a little thing called written history. I do think going into great detail explaining the how’s might, so I will stop for now. This movie barely misses the elusive 5th star but the lack of a true hotty to gawk at, and the unleashing of the hounds force me to drop back down and settle on the 4. But you can take my advice and see this movie if you love large scale battle sequences with a character driven story and don’t mind sitting for 2 and a half hours.
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