SCREEN SHOT - Kingdom of Heaven ( 2005 ) Director's Cut

Kingdom of Heaven is a Ridley Scott epic film through and through. This probably contains some of his finest stagings of battle sequences, with a gritty, if not to says sand dusted, aesthetic. This is bold large scale filmmaking, with an attempt at a big story at its core. The original release had nearly an hour cut from it by the distributor, and unsurprisingly people were a bit baffled and non plussed by the film, it didn't quite fully make sense. Very shortly afterwards Ridley Scott released a Director's Cut, which at over three hours in length does give the story more time to breathe properly. There are some brilliant performances from the likes of Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons, Ghassan Massoud, Eva Green. Plus Brendan Gleeson as a knight who has completely lost his marbles to barbarity, and an admirably restrained Edward Norton is devastating as the leperous King Baldwin.

Balian (Orlando Bloom) is a blacksmith in a nondescript French village. His life has fallen apart with the post partum suicide of his wife. Nothing about his life makes sense for him anymore. A group of Crusader knights pass through. One of them, Godfrey de Ibelin (Liam Neeson) turns out to be his Father. He tells him one way to redeem himself from the shameful shadow of his wife's suicide, would be to come with him on crusade. At first refusing. he later gets into an argument with his brother, whom he ends up murdering. He escapes on horse, to catch up with the Crusader knights. He really needs the salvation of the Crusades now.

The Crusades are a fascinating period to attempt to portray through one story. Kingdom of Heaven takes snapshots from the history and tries to deminstrate quite what a moral quagmire the Crusades were. Crusaders often had a very mixed perversion of motives. The character of Balian attempts to keep his volutions pure in a situation that screams at him to be morally compromised by a desire for power, wealth or sex. Sybilla ( Eva Green ) the sister of King Baldwin, is married to a brute of a Templar knight. The evident affection between Balian and Sybilla has to remain suppressed or at least chaste. Sybilla's life is one long suffering series of dutiful actions to protect herself, her brother and her nephew from harm. The ideals of the time were indeed held very high, only for most to inevitably fall hard and short of.

There are then a number of very meaty themes running through this film, which the script does sensitively grapple with, but doesn't always fully give convincing form to them. And if I were to hazard a guess at why this film, which is undoubtedly a very fine example of Ridley Scott at his most ambitious, nonetheless fails, I'd say it comes down to two things - it's script and it's leading man. 

The script lacks sharpness and bite, it doesn't quite get to grips with forming a cohesive line of moral tone through it. It went for far too broad a pallet of characters and scenarios that ended up muddying the clarity of the narrative line. Now this may have been saved if your lead had all the acting heft and sensitive intelligence of a Russell Crowe in Gladiator, which this film attempted to follow. But Orlando Bloom, really does not have a bone of moral gravitas in him. So as soon as you ask him to defend Jerusalem with a noble rousing speech from the battlements, it falls somewhat flat and limp. It's not that he is a bad actor, far from it, But a light romantic comedy this is not. What this film requires of him, is the breadth of his acting talent to raise its game to match it. I can understand why he was chosen, he was at his peak in popularity between Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings, he was big box office. But having this low key emotionally thin form of acting at it's centre, knocks a great big hole in the compelling vividness of its storytelling. You don't root for this guy, just pass him the sun cream and moisturizer. 

This Director's Cut does a sterling job at salvaging Kingdom of Heaven, because there is a lot to be in love with in this film. But it still only tips a hat towards greatness, unable to grasp it with both hands.

CARROT REVIEW -6/8