20th Century Fox Presents
Kingdom of Heaven

Directed by Ridley Scott

Written by William Monahan

Starring  Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson, and Jeremy Irons

Rated R for strong violence and epic warfare.

FUN FACT: One of the first drafts of the script begins with two present-day reporters getting stuck in Godfrey's tomb while war rages on the outside. It was subsequently dropped.

Kingdom of Heaver
2005 - Drama, Epic
Rated R
Reviewed by Donner
June 17, 2005

If Kingdom of Heaven has accomplished anything, it’s that it managed to be a better movie than the laughable Alexander. Also, Orlando Bloom has suddenly learned how to speak. In any case, if you’re wondering what my opinion of this historical Crusade-age epic is (and, let’s face it, what are you doing here otherwise) I’d say that this movie is lumbering and occasionally entertaining, but nothing to get too excited about.

Kingdom of Heaven stars that blonde woman from Lord of the Rings as a simple blacksmith whose wife and child have just died as wives and children were known to do in the middle ages. He’s lost his way and his reason for being until he is approached by a man who claims to be his father and who wants him to go with him to defend Jerusalem. Orlando decides not to go, but after he kills a thieving priest, he changes his mind since you can absolve yourself of your sins in the holy land.

There, Orlando fights for a king dying of leprosy, falls in love with a forbidden and totally hot queen, and rises to knighthood all while protecting Jerusalem from overwhelming fanatic enemy forces on both sides.

The sad thing about these historical epics like Troy, Alexander, and now Kingdom of Heaven is that in a year, I’m not going to remember any of them. I’m sure that my memories of these movies will all ooze together until I start swearing that there was a movie where Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom fought each other while Colin Farrell looked at them both with longing eyes.

My whole point is that these movies all look alike, they all play alike, sometimes even talk alike, and all of them pretty much stir up the same emotion… the emotion that goes along with extreme boredom… whatever that emotion might be.

Now, like I said, Kingdom of Heaven is better than Alexander and, from what I remember of Troy, probably on par or a little better than that. That’s not saying much for the quality of this movie, though, because after all… that turd on top of a pile of turds is still just a turd.

You know what could have made this movie special? How about showing what really happened during the Crusades instead of sidestepping the entire issue? How about real characters instead of extremist nutcases? If you go into this movie hoping to learn something factual about history, you’d probably have better luck watching House of Wax.

Aside from being stupifyingly dull, Kingdom of Heaven is under-acted by Orlando Bloom who, even though he isn’t as bad as he usually is, still completely sinks the entire production as he spends the entire movie trying to fill shoes that he can’t quite fill. He’s a pretty boy trying to be a big grown-up actor and he isn’t the least bit believable in the part.

Kingdom of Heaven eventually becomes a spineless pile of politically correct nonsense that has the audacity to call itself a historical epic. This movie is overlong, silly, and looks just like the historical movies that came before it.

If there’s any consolation in this, at least when Alexander, Troy, and Kingdom of Heaven will meld together as one bad movie in my memory instead of three. Then at least it will seem as if I didn’t suffer as much as I really did!