Kingdom of Heaven
First impressions:
PRETTY!!!
It looked very good. The beginning of the film is set in cold wintry France and the colour scheme, cold blues & green with small drifts of snowflakes was just perfect. Orlando's character, Balian, is in the beginning a blacksmith, though I think he's way too scrawny to ever be believable in such a profession. Still, he is revealed the bastard of a nobleman on his way to the crusades and after killing the village priest for his hateful words about his dead wife's destination in Hell (she killed herself after the death of their baby), he has nowhere else to go but with his father.
A funny detail about Liam Neeson's group is that the big blong German knight is a Finnish muscle man who has won several World's Strongest Man competition in the past and is now apparently trying for a film career :).
When Balian finally get to Jerusalem with all kinds of mishaps in the way, most of the Crusaders are shown to be patronising warmongering bastards, while Saladin and his men are shown to be honourable and much more noble than most of the Christians. The only person keeping the situation fairly peaceful is the king, but his strength and health is fading.
If you think about the story, it's pretty unbelievable: this bastard village blacksmith who starts the journey as a murderer ends up in Jerusalem, becomes the noblest of all knights, the king's trusted man, the lover of the king's sister, plus a sudden military genius who almost single-handedly (weelll, a slight exaggeration) defends Jerusalem from the invading army. Yeah, right.
The story and editing of the film feels flat after it ends, and it feels like they didn't really know what they wanted to do with it. Though it has plenty of gory battles, it's not a war movie. Though it has some romance, it's not a romantic movie per se. The politics and Balian's development into the defender of Jerusalem could also have been expanded more, because now it seems like he's just dropped there and suddenly he can do everything.
Still, it was entertaining. The film looks *very* good and Orlando is very pretty.
PRETTY!!!
It looked very good. The beginning of the film is set in cold wintry France and the colour scheme, cold blues & green with small drifts of snowflakes was just perfect. Orlando's character, Balian, is in the beginning a blacksmith, though I think he's way too scrawny to ever be believable in such a profession. Still, he is revealed the bastard of a nobleman on his way to the crusades and after killing the village priest for his hateful words about his dead wife's destination in Hell (she killed herself after the death of their baby), he has nowhere else to go but with his father.
A funny detail about Liam Neeson's group is that the big blong German knight is a Finnish muscle man who has won several World's Strongest Man competition in the past and is now apparently trying for a film career :).
When Balian finally get to Jerusalem with all kinds of mishaps in the way, most of the Crusaders are shown to be patronising warmongering bastards, while Saladin and his men are shown to be honourable and much more noble than most of the Christians. The only person keeping the situation fairly peaceful is the king, but his strength and health is fading.
If you think about the story, it's pretty unbelievable: this bastard village blacksmith who starts the journey as a murderer ends up in Jerusalem, becomes the noblest of all knights, the king's trusted man, the lover of the king's sister, plus a sudden military genius who almost single-handedly (weelll, a slight exaggeration) defends Jerusalem from the invading army. Yeah, right.
The story and editing of the film feels flat after it ends, and it feels like they didn't really know what they wanted to do with it. Though it has plenty of gory battles, it's not a war movie. Though it has some romance, it's not a romantic movie per se. The politics and Balian's development into the defender of Jerusalem could also have been expanded more, because now it seems like he's just dropped there and suddenly he can do everything.
Still, it was entertaining. The film looks *very* good and Orlando is very pretty.