The movies must be better in Hell.
Kingdom of Heaven
is the story of Balian (Orlando Bloom), a 12th century French blacksmith who travels to the Holy Land of Jerusalem to find his way back to God after the death of his wife and young child. His ailing father, a Crusader named Godfrey (Liam Neeson), invites him. Along the way, Balian is instructed in fighting and made a knight
by his father. After Godfrey's death, Balian
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inherits all his land. When war breaks out and Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) leads an onslaught on the Christians, Balian is charged with defending one of the holiest places on earth.
Kingdom
finds Bloom in familiar territory. The epic battle scenes with Saladin's enormous army and the impossible odds facing the Christians recall the battles from the second and third films of the
Lord of the Rings
trilogy. In those films, though, Bloom played only a supporting role with very few lines. Here, he is saddled with the weight of the entire film on his shoulders, a burden that proves far too heavy.
Upon his arrival in Jerusalem, Balian is transformed from the brooding blacksmith we're initially introduced to into a great leader and warrior. Bloom appears noble, holding his chin high and squinting his eyes, but can't ditch the impression of a young boy with a big voice.
The early parts of the film stress the point that people become who they really are in Jerusalem but, aside from two or three short scenes, Balian's search for God is abandoned as a plot thread. These scenes are cast aside as just a way into the rambling story rather than a functioning part of the plot.
A stellar supporting cast might have easily picked up the resulting slack left by the lead, but Bloom gets no help
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here. His love interest Sibylla (Eva Green) is little more than a blur of jewels and eye makeup and veterans like Jeremy Irons (as Tiberias) deliver performances as dry as the desert surrounding Jerusalem.
Praised in the past for his visual innovation, director Ridley Scott has branded
Kingdom
as a visual one-trick pony. The film's earliest fight scenes are given the slow motion treatment as if each is the climax. Later, when war erupts, there's more slow motion. Montage scenes of children running, workers digging and horses galloping are all slowed down to create a false sense of drama. This only serves to extend the running time and point out the tensionless film onscreen.
Scott, whose track record in the last decade has been nothing if not inconsistent, seems to be trying to repeat the success of the Oscar-winning
Gladiator
by mining the past for material. Instead, he's created his own
Alexander
, a festering pockmark on an ever-declining career.
