Movie Review

Kingdom of Heaven

This film sure is a lot of nothing. That?s what I was thinking early on, and that?s what I was thinking for the remaining 140 minutes of its painful running time. There are epics that I?ve liked, but I have to admit this is a genre I?m usually not excited about. Films that involve thousands of soldiers geared up in armor, ready to fight big battles usually do not sell me at first glance, as I generally prefer contemporary stories, with issues that I can actually relate to.

I thought Gladiator (B) was a solid use of story and action. Russell Crowe proved to be a strong hero, and director Ridley Scott handled the production quite well. Visually, the film was a feast and it was intense, but I wasn?t attached to the characters to the level of other great films. In my book, it was one of the few loud and smart Hollywood productions that have been made.

Kingdom of Heaven isn?t even a loud Hollywood production (but takes on the illusion that it is smart). There's actually not as much action as you might expect. The film is focused on the story and is actually surprisingly quiet and low key in tone for an epic. The soundtrack is reminiscent of Gladiator, but considering it?s not an action film like Gladiator, that puts most of the attention on the story, and that?s where Kingdom of Heaven fell extremely short.

The film is set during the crusades of the 12th Century in Jerusalem, and is about a blacksmith named Balian (Orlando Bloom) whose wife recently committed suicide and he is mourning her loss. A crusader named Baron (Liam Neeson) visits him in his village to inform him that he?s his long-lost father (Star Wars-style without a big setup), and that he had raped his mother. Baron invites Balian on a quest to Jerusalem where he hopes to train him to become a powerful knight. Balian accepts, and the epic adventure ensues.

The film?s biggest problem is that it?s just incredibly boring and one-dimensional. Orlando Bloom mostly speaks in one-sentence lines, and his constant monotonous facial expression does not help. His character is in grieving mode, but he spends that time merely gazing sourly at his fireplace or staring out in space. Even when the brief training process begins that leads him to becoming a warrior, Bloom just does not have a commanding presence to convince us that he is a leader ? he simply looks like a kid.

I like Liam Neeson as an actor, but his subplot (including his performance) felt very forced. His character also doesn?t have much backbone, leaving very little reason to care about their relationship. Balian?s quest just left a very ho-hum impression on me, and it felt like Gladiator Redux without most of the components that made that picture a treat. One character after another also gets killed in a brutal fashion (which results in a blood bath), but there is no attachment to anyone we see slaughtered. And some characters will appear, and sometimes more than once, but their presence is meaningless.

Screenwriter William Monahan takes a stab at controversial issues, making it seem as if he?s tackling a meaningful subject matter (which supposedly relates to contemporary society), but I viewed it as a failed attempt at something intellectual. Many characters speak in encyclopedic fashion, or like our hero, supposedly deep, one-sentence proclamations, which just makes various interactions ridiculous ? there?s barely a real personality on the page.

Visually, the film kind of works, but considering the running time, its very slow pace, the lack of performances to marvel over, and the dull, run of the mill premise, the film needed a lot more than visual effects to sway me over. The cinematography is pretty well done and there are sequences that do look cool (like snow falling in a forest or wind blowing a grass field), but the story had lulled me into a deep sleep early on. I really don?t care for these predictable, supposedly courageous stories, as I prefer some sort of suspense about the events to come and attachment to the main characters (or any, really), which I didn't find here.

Lee's Grade: C

A	0.4%
B	30.0%
C	61.7%
D	8.0%
F	0.0%