Kingdom of Heaven: a rant/review with spoilers

In short: bad movie, brutally hot (to quote clueless) lead.

He was even better looking than in Pirates, I really think. But otherwise, the movie was kind of... crap.

I'll elaborate in the very style of the movie:

Abrubt.

Disjointed.

Lacking character development, quality dialogue and coherent narrative motivation. Spent much of the movie saying "what? why did she do that?" (well, a couple of times)

3...2...1... *insert rousing speech here* , and much aphorising.

A perfectly sinless knight having it off with another man's wife, and refusing to look at the greater good and be sensible.

A blacksmith who suddenly and for no apparent reason becomes a brilliant military tactician.

"Here I am, in the crusades, bloody, battered, dirty, with perfect hair, teeth and eyeliner"

"Here I am, fighting for redemption, which I now don't believe in, against the Muslims, who I respect and don't want to kill, to save the city, which I want to abandon and save the people within, but which I will first fight a pitched battle over, rather than departing with the people now, and leaving Saladin a note that reads' the key is under the doormat, please feed the cat, garbage night is Thursdays' or similar."

A guy comes to a dessicated farm, from France, where water isn't an issue, and says "What say we build a well, then, and complicated irrigation system that I could have no knowledge of, even though you people have lived here for thousands of years?"

Peasants: "Oh yeah, hey then we could stop dying of dehydration. Why didn't we think of this?"

"Well, don't beat yourself up, we can't all be naive-blacksmith-cum-military-and-agricultural-geniuses, you know."

Peasants: "Yay! now take off your shirt! Yay!"

A lady who arrives and says give me water and then is like "my mouth says thanks for the water, my eyes say kiss me, you mad rash fool, and take off your shirt while you're about it."

And why was he sleeping with her anyway? He could do better, they had nothing in common except prettiness, and she was not that pretty and of completely out of context appearance. (I'm not bitter, I have no problem with a love interest, but for god's sake, develop somewhere.)

And why was she sleeping with him? He didn't seem to do anything except smoulder at her a bit... oh no wait, I withdraw that objection, carry on.

It was like "hello, let's have sudden and abrupt sex, which we might or might not continue doing, who knows". Was that a continuing relationship or a one-off thing? I don't know, and I saw the whole movie. Was it love or lust? Does she do this with every really, really, ridiculously good-looking ex-blacksmith who happens her way, or is this special and meaningful and so on?

David Thewlis, who plays Professor Lupin in Harry Potter, was in it. And that just seemed wierd to me, especially after some fanfic I read last week.... hmmm...

Jeremy Irons has a really coooollll voice, really, and the most character development, but screen time of a grand total of probably 10 minutes. And he abruptly left and went to Cyprus at one point, without warning, and was never seen or mentioned again. Abruptness much?

Still, Jeremy Irons, Scar from the Lion King, had an identical lower-case-scar in this movie, and Orlando Bloom was the Honourable Blacksmith again. Even had some of the same lines. And the bad guy was Celeborn from LOTR. And Liam Neeson was just so Qui Gon that it wasn't funny.

I mean, yay for intetextuality and all, but really. Calm down, there. People will start calling you derivative, just you wait.

Derivative.

See?

Takes itself really altogether too seriously.

Someone caught fire and burned painfully to death in the first 5 minutes. I hate that in a movie. You really need to work up to it, if you're going to do it at all, and preferably not even then.

Mind you, the guy who was burned had perfect lower and back teeth and carefully authenticated front 4 teeth, yellow and cracked. Good grief, did they not actually look at the guy at all before they filmed/set fire to him?

Pity that he was burned up, really, or they could perhaps have fixed them and done another take.

People fighting on through inevitably and instantly fatal wounds, while others died of a scratch. Scenes of "dear god, what an awful wound you have there, how traumatic." followed by complete lack of follow through and scar tissue. An inexplicable facial scar appearing halfway through the movie, never inflicted, moving around the face, but clearly of moderate age, so it had to have been inflicted during the duration of the movie.

I'll stop now, or no-one will read this.

All in all, an enjoyable enough movie, but don't expect quality. Although the hairdresser deserves some kind of award probably.

And, like I said... mmm... pretty...