For the record I love a good epic! I get a kick out of grisly battle scenes in a film and sweeping vistas, great love scenes, and lots of historical references! And so, I was quite excited about the prospect of this movie despite the fact that there have been so many complete and utter dud offerings in this genre in recent times. I won't mention the duds by name right now but you can make an intelligent stab at it!
The good news is that Kingdom of Heaven is, thankfully, not in this league. Dont' get me wrong it's not perfect. It is unsatisfactory in places and there are plot holes so large and gaping in the story that it irritated me to a large extent. Saying that though, I did enjoy it.
However the biggest problem with this film is that it tries to do too much. The hero becomes all things to all men very quickly and easily without giving us any indication of how he became so wise and knowledgeable considering he was a simple blacksmith at the start of the film. You could probably read into the events and surmise that the sum total of his experiences while travelling to Jeruseluem made the boy into a man but it really wasn't that clear from the story in the film whether this is in fact the case.
On a different level I'm not sure I like Orlando Bloom without his blonde wig and pointy ears and he didn't really convince me of his hero status in this film but he did an adequate job. He looks comfortable with a sword and lets face it he's a very pretty boy and thats always worth a point or two! Out of the substantial and impressive cast in this film, Jeremy Irons ran away with it for me. Although I have to mention Brendan Gleeson as well as he played the boorish evil minded drunk to perfection!
So that's it. Overall I enjoyed this movie. It wasn't perfect but it wasn't terrible I wouldn't say to you go out and see it immediately but at the same time if you have a spare 2 and a half hours its not a bad way to spend your time!
No comments:
Post a Comment