Kingdom of Heaven

Kingdom of Heaven

This is my first time using the Blogger for Word plugin so bare with me here…

I went into this movie not knowing a thing about it.  This is rare for me because I like to keep up on my coming movies because of some sick need for control of the fiction that is force-fed to me through my eyeballs.  This one sorta just slipped through the cracks.

Orlando Bloom is in it.  He’s the guy that played that Elf, Legolas, that movie about some sort of Ring and some Hobbits.  Have you noticed that he seems to enjoy acting in epic-style movies?  The trilogy of Hobbits, Troy, Pirates… I guess that isn’t really that epic, but you know what I mean.  This movie has sort’ve combined all of these characters into one.  First, the blacksmith from pirates, the prince/noble-type from Troy and now finally the warrior/swordsmen from Lord of the Rings.  This was the first time that I felt like he seemed to not be a teen actor though.  He seemed like an adult.  He was skinny in Pirates, Troy, and the Hobbitopia movies.  He must’ve bulked up, because no he looks like a more mature, full-sized man.

Liam Neeson is in the movie too, albeit briefly.  He plays the father of Orlando’s character.  And somehow, during a trip from France to Jerusalem, he manages to turn Orlando from a simple blacksmith into a decent swordsman and a hardcore battle-strategist.  I have a little bit of an issue with this, but Liam’s character was well done.  Acted well as usual – I like Liam.

Oh, and what’s with the king’s sister and her makeup?  Heavy, heavy, dark eye makeup does not look good on someone with freckles and bad hair.

Technical merits…

My girlfriend and I borrowed this movie from her mom and watched on our home surround system.  Her comment was that the cinematography is striking.  I couldn’t agree more.  A lot of the beginning of the movie there is snow flying through the air and you really get a sense of being there with the characters as the flakes seem to move so well three dimensionally.  Great care has been taken to make sure that none of the shots are wasted.  They’re all important to telling the little bit of story there is.

The first half of the movie, I was very impressed with the sound.  I always get goosebumps when movies take advantage of a subwoofer and I was suitably entertained.  The rumbly bits were rumbly.  The music was moving.  The battle scenes were gory and brutal and they sounded the part.  The second half of the movie’s sound was somewhat less impressive though.  Although the battle scenes were much more grand and the blood and guts much more apparent (think about 200,000 people throwing themselves against the walls of a city for a few days), the sound really did not match it.  There were explosions, and chunks of rocks flying all over the place, yet there were no real rumbly booms.  Arrows flying, like the snowflakes from the earlier parts of the movie, really gave you a sense of being there, but there were no really “whizz” sounds as the arrows passed by the camera (and some were obviously extremely close).

Rating…

On the old corn cob scale, 1 being so corny that you should think about changing your diet and 5 being not so corny, this would have to be a strong 3.  Ridley Scott knows what he’s doing when it comes to making a film.  If the sound guy hadn’t taken a break for the second half of the movie, and had the story been something a little stronger than Orlando Bloom finding himself, then this could’ve been a 4 and maybe a 5.  It’s not one that I’ll own, and it’s probably not one that I’ll be going out of my way to watch again.