Ahoy, squirts! Quint here... I'm running on fumes here... I got very little sleep last night, saw 2 Epic movies on the big screen and then came back to write about both of them plus update. I'm not complaining... this is what I live for! Just in the interest of full disclosure so you understand why this might turn into a half-assed review or spot some wild tangents that my sleep deprived brain tells me are good ideas.
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN is a movie I've been looking forward to for quite a while. I love, love, love Ridley Scott (LEGEND is one of my all time favorite movies) and I am one of the three people on this earth (including Orlando Bloom's Mom, Wolfgang Peterson's brother and Eric Bana's poolboy) who really liked TROY, so Orlando Bloom headlining a Ridley Scott epic sounded good to me, especially since it surrounds the Crusades, a subject I've long been curious about, but haven't read much about.
The film follows a blacksmith (Orlando Bloom) who is suffering through the poverty of a famine stricken land. He lost a child to disease, he then lost a wife to suicide after she couldn't deal with the death of their child... All this we find out after the fact. Some crusaders file through his little area, including Liam Neeson. Their arrival isn't coincidental. Neeson has sniffed Bloom out in order to beg forgiveness... You see, Neeson wham-bam-thankya-ma'amed his mother and believe it or not... is his father.
Neeson also invites him along to Jerusalem, where Bloom can begin to atone for his sins and perhaps even do enough good that his wife (a suicide, remember) might be saved from damnation.
The opening is actually my favorite part of the film even though the big battles are in the second half of the flick. Bloom's confrontation with the graverobbing priest who not only beheaded the corpse of his wife, but also stole her crucifix is intense and brutal... and where else outside of a vampire flick am I gonna get to see a cross burned into flesh?
Shortly after this Bloom catches up to Neeson and his band, including David Thewlis, an actor that used to be fingernails on a chalkboard to me, but damned if he hasn't become one of my favorite character actors. He's great in this. Neeson does a bit of teaching how to fight, then all hell breaks loose. Arrows fly, axes hack and only a few of the group make it out alive. There's a particularly great muscle-bound character that I wish had stayed in the movie... he's a badass and you'll know why when you see the flick.
The rest of the movie is Bloom becoming a Knight and taking the side of the King of Jerusalem, a leper played by Edward Norton, who goes out of his way to broker peace between the Christians and the Muslims. There are those within the walls of Jerusalem that want no peace and thus the action is ramped up.
I really dug this movie, but it's not perfect. I've heard rumor that Scott had to cut an hour out of the movie. I believe it. The pacing is off and it doesn't seem to flow right, scenes rushing together or speeding by too fast to make a huge impact. I hope to see Scott's original cut someday. I do concede that I was damn tired when watching this movie, so my exhaustion might have played a part in that.
Orlando Bloom does a fine job, effortlessly carrying the picture. I never saw him wobble with the responsibility. I think we'll be seeing a lot more of him.
The epic battles are good... a little too GLADIATOR shaky, but still very entertaining and gruesome. My fears from the trailers that I'd keep being reminded of RETURN OF THE KING and THE TWO TOWERS were not unfounded. You'll see a lot of the LOTR films in this movie... you'll hear it, too... I shit you not, Orlando Bloom at one point says "Let them come!"
What I liked best about the film was the way it treated the Muslims. This flick could really be an important learning tool for the ignorant out there, those that can't ever see the humanity of other cultures. Remember when the Japanese and later the Vietnamese were just "squinty-eyed gooks"? With time sandwiched between then and now we understand their reasons for fighting us, we can see them as human beings, but I see a scary amount of that same ignorance aimed at Muslims today.
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN underlines the similarities between the Christians and Muslims, how their holy relics in Jerusalem are no different than the Christian holy relics. David Thewlis has a great monologue about religion. He plays a priest, remember, but he says he doesn't like religion because it's used as a badge for heretics in every faith ever known. Holiness is in your actions and decisions. This is the same speech that gives us that great trailer moment when Thewlis points to Bloom's head and heart saying "What God wants is here and here."
It ain't perfect, but it's sure epic and pretty. I liked GLADIATOR a lot more, but KINGDOM OF HEAVEN is certainly very relevant and what the hell else you gonna go see this weekend? HOUSE OF WAX? Fuck no you're not! Fuck that shit! KINGDOM OF HEAVEN!!!
Anyway, enough of my rantings and ravings. Hope you folks have a good weekend. I have my thoughts on a certain space flick to give ya', but that'll be in a day or two. 'Til then this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu!
-Quint
