Kingdom of Heaven Review

Ok, went and saw the movie yesterday, in which what i have to say was a crowded theater. That movie is garnering a lot of interest and hitting a lot of nerves, probably because of the topic it deals with ( christian & muslim conflict over middle-eastern land). I wanted to see it cause 1) It looked awesome visually, 2) I felt Ridley Scott owed me an apology for the over-hyped shitty B movie that was Gladiator (no one still can explain to me why the emperor didn't just send some people to kill maximus) and 3) Eva Green is HOT HOT HOT and her hotness is multiplied by a 100x in her arabian night seductress outfits that she kept wearing in the movie. So, yeah, had to go see it and i am glad to say that i am not disappointed, well , for the most part anyway. The movie is pretty good, and the Battle scenes are excellent, so that's good, but the acting was a mixed bag. Orlando Bloom is playing someone who is equal parts of his Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean Characters ( Blacksmith, badass in battle), if you can manage to take all the humor out of them and make them just sneer 99% of the time. I am kind of annoyed that this is his like 6th historical epic in a row, and I wonder if I can ever see him in a movie wearing a suit or something and be OK with it. Eva Green is just beautiful to look at, although I can’t figure out her character or her motives or why she describes herself as “unpredictable”. The only unpredictable thing she did was going over Bloom’s character’s house to sleep with him after only talking 4 sentences with him previously, and last time I checked that was just plain slutty behavior, u know? Maybe she is unpredictable cause she is a slutty princess? Hmm… But the person that steals the movie hands down is Ghassan Massoud, who plays Salaheldeen. The man has clint-eastwood-like badass presence and steals every scene he is in and for once it was nice to have a good Arab muslim character on screen, you know, someone who isn’t a terrorist. Massoud’s only competition is Edward Norton who plays the Leper King of Jerusalem. They are both incredibly unpredictable and entertaining when they are on screen and you can’t help but like them. Jeremy Irons is also awesome, because he gives his character – who is a peacekeeper in the movie- a rough subtext that is not reflected in the dialogue. You kind of get the feeling that you did not want to mess with his character when he was a little younger. He is the old and weary warrior that prefers peace but can still whoop your ass if you piss him off. So the acting was good, the directing was good, so what was bad? Ahh, the politics. Let’s talk about the politics of the movie for a minute shall we? The politics of the movie make the movie funny, because in a movie that tackles a historical subject like the viscious religious war that the crusades were, it literally walks away from talking about the religions , what they stand for or the reasons that cause them to fight one another. The movie is about a crusade fought by liberal humanists for the most part, which you have to say is kind of wack , and where religion is shown to be nothing but a tool to start wars and seize power then anything else. The men of religion in this movie- who are all Christians by the way- are either 1) vicious assholes like the priest in Bloom’s village, 2) Priests who make fun of religion like Bloom’s father’s priest, or 3) Two-faced, opportunist and cowardly, like the representative of the Catholic church who when the city is under siege asks to be escorted out cause “It’s god’s will” or when it’s time for negotiations between Bloom’s character and Salaheldeen he tells Bloom to “convert to Islam and repent later”. The whole theme: Religion- especially Christianity- is bad, we should all just be moral instead, clergymen are not good representatives for their religions, Muslim and Christians have more in common then they think and if we just weed out the fanatics- or anyone who takes religion too seriously- we would all live in peace, and finally Jerusalem probably should be destroyed- they actually joke about it- so that people should stop going crazy and fighting over it. That’s the moral of the movie in a nutshell. Either way, go see it. It’s a beautifully shot movie and quite enjoyable if you don’t take it too seriously. The movie is bound to make strict Christians mad and moderate Muslims happy, while the Jews will wonder how come they are not represented at all in the movie or in the city ( They suffer the same fate black people suffered in Friends’ New York City, they vanish from the city completely). Don’t try to read too much into it, enjoy the beauty that is Eva Green and poetic fireball destruction that only Ridley Scott can deliver instead. Ok?