Source:
rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating:
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My Tagline---Killing and dying for fairy tales
You just can't make a decent movie about the Crusades anymore. The Monty
Python gang already satirized the pomposity of these kinds of battle epics
so thoroughly with their side-splitting 'Monty Python And The Holy Grail'.
They've ruined it (gloriously!) for everyone else. To make a serious film
about the Crusades is asking for ridicule. And since Ridley Scott and his
cast & crew have made a dull-ass slug of a film and thereby asked for that
ridicule, by golly, I'll be happy to oblige them.
Okay, let's play nice first and give Sir Ridley his due. He's been on a
remarkable roll in the past half-decade, with big hits, such as 'Gladiator',
'Hannibal', and 'Black Hawk Down'. After a dismal run in the '90s that
followed 'Thelma And Louise', his career took off again once the clock
struck 2000. Scott has always been an F/X maestro and a world-class
craftsman of action scenes. While those parts of 'Kingdom Of Heaven' are not
very different than what you'll see in other recent bloody sword flicks,
they ARE the highlights of this movie.
God knows that every scene of exposition is lousy. William Monahan's
brain-deadening screenplay accomplishes nothing more than provide links from
one fight to the next. Bad performances are the director's fault, but a
large chunk of the blame also should go to a script that doesn't reach for
anything beyond Dr. Philisms. No matter how pretty John Mathieson's sweeping
camerawork is or how much the sound rumbles all over the theatre, epics can
only avoid redundancy and thickheadedness if the writing sings. 'Kingdom Of
Heaven' has all that light and shadow, sound and fury, and it signifies
zippo.
As for Scott, he's never been an actor's director. That really shows here.
Old pros like Liam Neeson (as Godfrey) and Jeremy Irons (as Tiberias) barely
register and Orlando Bloom (as Balian) cannot carry this project by himself,
although that's what he's asked to do. He's a boy playing a man's stupid
game. Follow him into battle? I wouldn't follow Orlando Bloom into the
supermarket. What happened to the likability and athletic derring-do we saw
in 'The Lord Of The Rings'? He comes off as a glum little putz in anything
not directed by Peter Jackson. [And don't get me started on how somebody
should have kicked his cowardly ass in 'Troy'.]
There is a plot and it's based on actual people, if that means anything.
Christians war with Muslims for control of the Holy Land in Jerusalem.
Christians (led by Bloom) win some battles, Muslims win some. The finale
takes place at the mighty wall of the city of Jerusalem (or was that Helm's
Deep? Or the gates of Troy? Or the Alamo?) and many men die needlessly
before it's all over. Okay, war is hell, so why fight? Who's right and who's
wrong? Beats me. Nobody wants to offend Muslims these days and no filmmaker
wants to make Christians look all that bad either (because they supply the
mega-bucks to make these kinds of mega-movies). 'Kingdom Of Heaven' wusses
out and calls it a draw.
The on-going war between the Christians and the Muslims has to rank up there
near the top of the list of Top 59 Stupid Blood Feuds. This one seems to
still be happening because they worship a different God. Or sometimes these
feuds keep going forever because they worship the same God in different
ways. Whee. I have no sympathy for any idiot who kills and dies for fairy
tales. It might be easier to empathize with a cause on either side if the
various warmongers in 'Kingdom Of Heaven' were memorable in the slightest.
There are a lot of characters in this movie (many of them of the digital
persuasion) and I didn't care about a single one of them.
I wanted to care about Eva Green, who plays Bloom's love interest and---as
is melodramatic custom, it seems---the wife of Bloom's rival. She's a curvy
delight, although her performance doesn't exactly light the world on fire.
Fact is, if you're going to cast the busty star of 'The Dreamers' and give
her a sex scene with Bloom, but NOT give us a good look at that magnificent
body of hers, then you're just wasting your "R" rating. That rating IS
earned by the sheer determination of the makeup department to spray as much
blood around as possible. That's fine, but I regret that Miss Green didn't
give us some el buffo.
All hope was not lost once Brendan Gleeson turned up. He's one of the best
character actors working today and he has a juicy part as a troublemaking
usurper to the Christian King. Gleeson was the jilted Menelaus in 'Troy'. If
you were hoping he'd get back at Bloom for stealing Helen of Troy (as I
certainly was), no dice. And if you thought it would be nice to see Godfrey
stick around long enough to teach Balian (his illegitimate son) more than a
few tricks, double no dice. All the interesting characters die too soon,
including Edward Norton, who plays the Christian King Baldwin. He's got a
bad case of leprosy, so we never see his face. In fact, I didn't know who
was playing Baldwin until the end credits. Good actors they are, wasted they
are.
Perhaps my pissiness is because of the exasperating coda. Without giving
away too much, I'll say this---if you survive THAT hell, you don't go back
for more! There's nothing rousing in this picture and it manages to be most
depressing of all as it fades to black. All it shows is just how dedicated
and noble and perfectly stupid the Christians were in clinging to their
precious Crusades. It also proves they didn't learn a damn thing. But then
again, when has mankind ever learned anything from past mistakes?
'Troy', 'King Arthur', 'Alexander' and now 'Kingdom Of Heaven' have wrung
every last breath out of the Sword & Sandal style of filmmaking. The genre
is dead and it needs to stay that way for a while---at least until somebody
can write a script with 1 or 2 fresh ideas. It's appropriate that Ridley
Scott's own Oscar winner ('Gladiator', natch) revived the genre a few years
ago because now his latest picture has effectively ended it again. If you're
thinking of labouring through nearly two and a half hours of 'Kingdom Of
Heaven', take Monty Python's advice straight out of their own Holy Grail
flick---"Run away!"
By : Ryan Ellis
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