Kingdom of Heaven

It took me three nights to do so, but I've finally finished watching Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, a historical epic set in Jerusalem during the Crusades. I went into the movie with very little knowledge about it beyond that it had received "mixed reviews" back in 2005. I figured, best case, something along the lines of Braveheart and Gladiator, an amazing movie that would just resonate with me down to the core. And worst case? Something similar to but shorter and more palatable than Lawrence of Arabia. What I got was something in the middle - a decent and enjoyable but at times slow and boring heavily fictionalized biopic based on a real historical figure. Orlando Bloom as Balian of Ibelin, ladies and gentlemen! Bloom's performance kind of stands in as a metaphor for the entire movie: adequate, and not bad, but leaving me wanting something more. Like, on the one hand, the movie featured Liam Neeson as a father and mentor figure, and it had an incredible and impressive battle scene at its climax. On the other hand, Edward Norton shows up during the middle third to play an old king with leprosy, in the weirdest casting choice I can remember seeing in a big budget historical epic. There were some double crosses in there and I think there was supposed to be a love story, or at least a romantic subplot, but none of it really registered with me as anything more than heavy tropes. The biggest aspect for which Kingdom of Heaven deserves credit was its heavier and slightly more sophisticated theme compared to other films of its genre. I love Braveheart and Gladiator as I said, among many other movies like them, but they can both be summed up pretty thoroughly with the synopsis, "a man loses his family to a cruel and oppressive regime, and then fights like hell to overcome his enemies." There's power in that simplicity, not to mention timelessness and mass appeal. But Kingdom of Heaven goes deeper than that. Here, there are no ruthless arch-rivals; instead, there are chivalrous generals on opposite sides of an eternal religious conflict. And there is no grand martyrization of the hero at the end as he overcomes insurmountable odds; instead, the movie ends in a stalemate of sorts, just like the Crusades, and not all that unlike the state of Christian-Muslim relationships in the Middle East today. Still, I can't give Kingdom of Heaven full credit for pushing the genre to new heights, because it was far too entrenched in the genre to avoid using the aforementioned tropes and there were too many other issues - from Edward Norton to Orlando Bloom to the lackluster romance subplot - to ignore. It almost seems like Ridley Scott could have made either a better epic movie had he reigned in his tonal goals a bit or a smarter and more insightful movie had he ignored the confines of the genre and been more courageous in exploring the philosophy and politics of the religious conflict. A solid movie, overall, but one that could have been better in two entirely different ways.