Kingdom of Boredom

Making a film about the Crusades seemed like a bad, bad idea. Who do you make the hero? A Christian who wants to free the Holy land from the Muslims? Or maybe a Muslim? It certainly would be darn easy to make the Europeans look like lunatics killing for profit and a better title. But Hollywood certainly isn't ready to make a Middle Easterner the hero.

Instead, in "Kingdom of Heaven," Ridley Scott chose a tepid storyline and hero. Orlando Bloom is Balian, a widowed blacksmith who wants to get out France. Luckily, his never-seen-before Dad arrives, played by Liam Neeson. Neeson, as he does in "Gangs of New York" and "The Phantom Menace," sticks around long enough to teach the young man to fight and be a man. (Five bucks says that says that Neeson dies within the first 40 minutes of "Batman Begins" after teaching Bruce Wayne to fight and be a man.)

Balian goes to Jerusalem, but not on a crusade; he doesn't mind the Muslims and neither does the good leper king of Jerusalem, who takes Balian under his wing. Leading the Islamic side is Saladin, the great Kurdish leader. The historic Saladin, while he wanted to spread to Islam, wasn't too into slaughtering innocent Christians. In "Kingdom," Scott also pretends that one of history's great military geniuses was not particularly interested in war. After that set up, the film ambles on. Our hero, Balian, tarries with a pretty girl. He digs a well without a shirt on. His people love him. The king loves him. Jeremy Irons, playing military commander Tiberius, loves him. So, folks where is the conflict?

In come the teeth-gnashing British actors to be bad guys. In last year's ancient epic "Troy," our man was Brian Cox. In "Kingdom of Heaven," we have Brendan Gleeson as the Knight Templar who wants to remove all Muslims from the Holy Land. I only saw "Troy" once and would like to forget it, but I am pretty sure that in that sandy epic, we had someone bellow "Give me war!" This time, just to mix things up, Ridley Scott has Marton Csokas playing Gleeson's buddy (you might recognize Csokas from his time in Peter Jackson's Middle Earth) hiss the line.

So we have war.

This is where I am grateful to Ridley Scott. The script may be without crusading fire, but he knows how to make the ancient world look like an ancient world and he knows how to make a war look like a war. Wolfgang Petersen's Troy looked like a movie set. His battles looked like a bunch of gawkers saying, "Hey, look! It's Brad Pitt!" Though, if you want to see the silliest siege scenes of the past decade, rent the egregious "Timeline." It's not a matter of budget either, "Timeline" and "Troy" had lotsa money. Some directors just can't meld action and special effects. Scott can.

In the end, "Kingdom of Heaven" is quite pretty, but completely without purpose. You never really understand Balian and Orlando Bloom still seems too boyish to be a lead. You're never rooting for either side. Yeah, there are bad guys, but you really don't hate them like it was fun to hate Joaquin Phoenix in "Gladiator." In the end, it's not really worth the time.

If you decide to subject yourself to this boring, yet competent film, look for:

-Balian's amazing ability to make the desert grow in what seems to be one day.
-Ridley Scott's strange choice to constantly cut to close-ups of Eva Green, the hot princess, during the fight scenes.
-How effective Edward Norton is at conveying emotion even though you never see his face. He may be pretentious in interviews, but the man can act.
-David Thewlis. This British actor gave one of the great performances of the nineties in Mike Leigh's "Naked." He's a thespian, like Gene Hackman and Vincent D' Onofrio, that make me think that every movie would five times more interesting if he were in it. He's the heart of the film.