Ridley Scott has come a long way since those 70s Hovis ads. In terms of box office is now the most successful British director ever as well as one of the more diverse directors, tackling as he has science fiction (Alien, Blade Runner), feminist road movie (Thelma & Louise) and serial killer thriller (Hannibal). Once again he’s set his sights on the historical epic, a genre he’s familiar with through such films as 1492: Conquest of Paradise and more recently, Gladiator.
On paper, Kingdom of Heaven has striking similarities to Scott’s last all-conquering epic: a man who’s lost his wife and son; a battle in a snowy forest; a journey to a desert land. Like Gladiator it is a visually stunning film with an interesting historical backdrop, but where Gladiator had the charismatic and muscular actor Russell Crowe carrying the film, Kingdom of Heaven has the rather insipid Orlando Bloom as a young French peasant who becomes a knight and leads the Christians in the defence of Jerusalem against the invading Muslims. Orlando has the face of a matinee idol, but lacks the charisma and the physicality needed to convince in such a role. In some of the promotional posters for the movie, Orlando appears to be ferociously cutting down Saracens; but in the film he seems as ferocious as a well-meaning youth club leader.
This film could be viewed as a straightforward historical narrative, or as an allegory for the current western invasion of the Middle East. Sadly it works on neither level. As an allegory of Iraq its message is too much of a simplistic 'can’t we all just get along?’. Historically it fails not just because of its distorted version of history (Balian was neither a blacksmith peasant nor lover of Princess Sybilla, to name but two of many historical inaccuracies) or the holes in the plot (How did a blacksmith become such a fine military tactician? How did he have knowledge to build a well where the more scientifically advanced Muslims had failed?) but because of the rather wishy-washy depiction of the religious feeling of the time. At the time of filming there were claims that the film contained blatantly anti-Islamic elements, and it seems that Scott has gone out of his way to portray them in the kindest possible light. While the Christians (Guy de Lusignan and Reynald de Châtillon especially) are power hungry and bloodthirsty, characters such as Balian and David Thewlis’s Hospitaler espouse a strangely modern secular rhetoric which can be summed up as 'religion – it’s all a bit silly isn’t it?’
'Silly’ is precisely how I’d describe this film. The acting is at best pedestrian. Marton Csokas, who plays the evil Guy De Lusignan has obviously been studying Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as a lesson in camp villainy. Eva Green as love-interest Sybilla has little to do than look worried in a lot of kohl and mascara. The script is nothing short of laughable – my favourite line has to be the directions on how to get to Jerusalem: 'Go until men speak Italian and continue until they speak something else’.
Despite the sumptuous sets and costumes, you never get a real feel of the Middle Ages. Everyone’s too clean, and where are the pudding basin haircuts, tights and pointy shoes? Ah, but that just wouldn’t be sexy would it? At one point as Orlando romps through the desert in his black leather strides, his white shirt a-billowing and his raven locks a-flowing, I was reminded not so much of an 1100s parfait gentil knight but 1960s rocker Jim Morrison of The Doors. The CGI action scenes are well executed but too reminiscent of the battle for Helm’s Deep in Lord of the Rings. By the time the battle scenes arrived I was already looking at my watch.
Ultimately this film is a wasted opportunity. In the battle for the Holy Land there lies an interesting tale – this version of Carry On Up The Crusades simply isn’t it.