This flick was a pretty big letdown for me. I mean, when you look at who is involved in the project (Ridley Scott, Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons, Orlando Bloom, Edward Norton) you wonder how it could possibly go wrong. And then it hits you. None of these factors can have any true meaning under the weight of poor writing, and unfortunately, that’s exactly what we have here. We’ve got a gloriously shot film containing actors who are at the top their games and I just simply couldn’t have cared less. That’s really all you need to know, but I’ll elaborate a little because I feel like it, but be warned there are a few minor spoilers to follow.
The main issue I had with Kingdom of Heaven was the fact that so much of it was based on relationships which carried little to no meaning. Balian’s quest (as portrayed by Bloom) is set up as a grand effort to live up to his father’s hopes for him. Well, he meets his father for the first time at the start of the film, a father who never made any effort to meet him before, probably had a one night stand with his mother, and left him a bastard. We are with the two characters for the entire duration that they are in each other’s company (a matter of days) and all is forgiven in an instant, and the boy wants nothing more than to live up to his father’s wishes. Uh-huh…
Then there’s the love story. The two main lovers meet, fall in love, and have their relationship thrown in jeopardy over a matter of days. Ok, been done but that’s not what makes it bad. The beginning of the film sets up the fact that his, supposedly, beloved wife committed suicide just days before the start of the film and he is devastated by this. Now, all of the sudden he’s forgotten all about her and is instantly madly in love with this other woman, and the audience is once again supposed to care. Uh-huh…
I won’t get started on Balian’s taking over of his father’s land because that’s just something else entirely… Well, maybe I will a little. At the start of the film he’s a blacksmith with no knowledge of his father’s life as a baron in the Holy Lands. Now he finds this out, and he takes on that title. Instantly, he knows exactly how to govern these lands and knows everything about military strategy and how to defend his lands and ultimately Jerusalem. Now, I know this is supposed to be based on true events, but the real Balian must have learned this shit at some point, no?
The only character I really felt any emotion toward was the king dying of leprosy, as portrayed by Edward Norton and the entire time he was on screen he was wearing a metal mask which covered his whole face! Here was a sympathetic character who exuded emotion and you could feel genuinely cared about his people and land, and knew what he was doing and talking about. While Bloom passed in the best performance he could, there was just nowhere to take his character. He was noble, true, and honest from the start of the film and apparently even knew how to command troops from his days as a blacksmith… There was no arc or conflict to his character and therefore very little journey for the audience to go on with him other than from location to location and battle to battle.
One last issue is kind of a petty one. Here is where this sorts of epic films need to really stand-out in today’s society, especially in the wake of the Lord of the Rings films. The final grand battle of Kingdom of Heaven is almost an exact replica of the Battle at Helm’s Deep from The Two Towers. It’s so similar that it took me right out of the film, from the shots to the speeches to the artillery to the set destruction (the whole seen where the wall at Helm’s Deep is blasted is almost identically recreated here) and most glaringly the helpless women in children hiding away listening to the sounds of the siege, and everything was done better and more impressively in Helm’s Deep. One problem that leapt out was the distinct lack of main characters to follow in the battle. The only person fighting who you had any feelings toward was Orlando and so you end up spending a lot of time watching people fight who you could give two shits about, unlike the Lord of the Rings films where there is always another important character that you can cut to from the wider battle shots.
One other note is in regards to the subject. This is a film about the Crusades, and oddly enough, religion plays a relatively small role in the film. The two fractions are more like countries fighting over land than religions fighting over holy symbols. Really, the film works as an indictment of organized religion with multiple characters expressing their distaste for it in general, proclaiming that each man should find their own beliefs to hang on to with their own view of God. This is actually a sentiment I agree with and was happy the film went in this direction. What? I like something the writers did? Wow…
Ok, so there was a lot of complaining in there. Meanwhile, I certainly don’t regret seeing the film. It was an enjoyable enough way to spend 2 and a half hours, but I don’t need to see it again. Like I said, it was impressively shot and the overall story was somewhat intriguing, but don’t expect to be emotionally enthralled or presented with anything you haven’t seen before.
6/10 Awesomes
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