Kingdom of Heaven

Directed by Ridley Scott. Starring Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, and Eva Green. Rated 14A.

Thousands of Christians gather to rail against the army of Muslims waiting to storm the gates of their citadel, with both sides whipped up by warmongering priests promising death to all unbelievers. And that's just Saturday night on The 700 Club.

Pat Robertson aside, if you want to know where the current Crusades got their start, Kingdom of Heaven won't clue you in. But Ridley Scott's latest mega-epic does have some subversively interesting things to say about the nature of tribes and religion. Little of it is reassuring, but it is handsomely done stuff.

Orlando Bloom plays Balian, a lowly yet proud blacksmith in 12th-century France. His fortunes change with a visit from some knights on their way to Jerusalem. The leader is Sir Godfrey (a too-briefly seen Liam Neeson), a beefy baron who almost casually reveals that Balian is his son and that he'd like him to join the journey. Searching for redemption after a series of tragedies-some certainly the result of his hot temper-the lad reluctantly agrees, and the trip will not be easy.

Within the next half-hour of this 145-minute saga, our hero survives a shipwreck, a swordfight with a Muslim warlord, a crisis of faith, and an encounter with a princess wearing way too much makeup. The last, played by French actor Eva Green (The Dreamers), is the sister of the current king of Jerusalem, a young leper hidden by a silver mask and speaking with the voice of Edward Norton, who enjoys an uneasy truce with Islam.

The sister is married to a nobleman (Marton Csokas) with less-than-noble attitudes toward Muslims, not to mention rivals for his wife's affections. He is egged on in his bloodthirsty ways by a cohort (Brendan Gleeson) and their "Templar bastards", while the king and newly ascendant Balian are aided by world-weary field marshall Tiberias-and, really, who does world-weary better than Jeremy Irons?

These forces are able to impose a certain balanced stasis on the proceedings, but, unfortunately, this translates to a kind of inertia felt by the movie in general. Working from a literate, if too literal, script by newcomer William Monahan, Scott reduces the Crusades to the whims of a few self-absorbed individuals, thereby depriving us of the period's prevailing mindsets. More crucially, he has given us a hero so perfect, so knowing of what to do next, that he ends up more bore than superstar. The film has grace but it lacks passion.

The romantic angle feels tacked-on, there are too many loose plot strands, and I wish the tale had spent more time with the Arab leader Saladin (Ghassan Massoud). Still, there's something refreshing about a Crusader who goes searching for God and finds humanity instead. And it will drive the chest beaters crazy.

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