Popular reviews

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  Review by Travis Lytle ★★★★★ 4

  Rousing, heartbreaking, and important, Ridley Scott's masterful "Kingdom of Heaven" soars like epics of the past while brimming with contemporary significance. Pitting men who claim to fight in the name of God against Godly men who stand for peace, the film is thrillingly assembled and grippingly told. It is a remarkable piece of work from a great director.

  Taking place nearly a thousand years ago, "Kingdom of Heaven" tells the story of Orlando Bloom's disgraced Balian, a blacksmith who becomes a man of importance in Jerusalem. One on hand, the film is about an individual who rises to become something great. On the other, it is about the politics the mark the Holy Land even to this day. Balian is…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 3

  "If God did not love you, how could you do all the things that you have done?"

  This is really excellent, traditional spectacle, pretty and exciting and very self-consciously classy. Ridley never met a metaphor he wouldn't belabor or a theme he wouldn't thuddingly spell out in dialogue, but this is also so blindingly sincere in its pretentiously noble depiction of an areligious (or maybe just secular) righteousness that it transcends itself. I mean, there's literally a scene where Jeremy Irons gravely intones: "First I thought we were fighting for God, then I realized we were fighting for wealth and land. I was ashamed." Cornball earnest but simultaneously so completely forthright about its depiction of the political expediency of fanaticism and its attendant economy of wasted lives that it becomes actively moving. Orlando Bloom is just awful in it.

  [Extended cut]

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  Review by Daniel Kibbe ★★★★ 4

  *Watched the Director's Cut*

  An incredibly striking epic, and one that could've only come from the hands of Ridley Scott. I had forgotten just how visually impressive this film is. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, and if there's one thing Ridley knows how to do, it's direct a battle scene. The story is level in its portrayal of sides and is engaging throughout the 3 hour runtime. All the acting is very good (probably a best from Orlando Bloom which, I guess, isn't saying a whole lot), and Edward Norton is excellent, but I do wish Jeremy Iron's character was a little more fleshed out.

  Kingdom of Heaven is fantastic historical epic that's worthy of being placed among the best.

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  Review by comrade_yui ★★★★★ 6

  the exact kind of stupendously moronic revisionist epic that only an idiot-savant like ridley scott could make. monstrous in scope, heaps upon heaps of gruesome violence, a formidably stacked cast of thespians, all these half-baked thematic platitudes about religious tolerance and chivalry and ethics, it's all here. i can't decide whether to laugh at the portentous 2000s-era gritty desaturated gloominess, or to uncritically adore it; i think i'll do both. the whole script is just a cinematic playground where ridley scott stages a teenager's naïve conception of medieval history in which a singular peasant magically transports themselves through sheer coincidence and willpower past all class divisions and social strata. reminds me a lot of the assassin's creed videogames where 70%…

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  Review by AlexDavies ★★★★½ 4

  “Your quality will be known among your enemies, before ever you meet them, my friend.”

  A quest to Jerusalem to find your faith and also explore meaning and place. Dignity is a quality that some have, some don’t. There are extremists on both sides. A tale of motivation, nobility, and reason that pressures you too prove your worth in this world. Ridley Scott’s gaze is open-minded and observant. He can produce any location. His love for creating a setting shines here. Kingdom of Heaven is a Crusades epic bolstering the richest of historical context and purposefully situational appositeness. This circumstantiality yields great amounts of knowledge and erudition. “It is a kingdom of conscience, or nothing”.

  Orlando Bloom’s silent yet affecting…

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  Review by Nate ★★★★ 2

  God Ridley gave us the definitive nu-medieval movie: a dusty emo gore-fest about the Iraq War, a key text for 2000's nostalgia. A sword and socks-with-sandals epic.

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  Review by Mario ★★★★

  Just like Alexander I have seen this a few times on tv when I was a child, probably the theatrical version. This was my first time seeing the Director's cut, but I'm not able to remember much from my previous viewings, so I can't really compare the different versions.

  What I can certainly say is that this movie features one of the best casts I've ever seen. These are only the actors I recognized and knew by name without looking them up: Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, Michael Sheen, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Eva Green, David Thewlis, Kevin McKidd, Marton Csokas, Nicola Coster-Waldner, Edward Norton and Sir Friendzone himself Iain Glen.
  The score is unbelievably beautiful. Mad respect to Harry Gregson-Williams for pulling that of.

  As much as I despise war, especially religious war, this is part of our history and should never be forgotten. Hopefully we will be able to someday learn something of it.

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  Review by Josh Gillam ★★ 6

  Orlando Bloom stars in Ridley Scott’s epic historical fiction drama about a blacksmith who travels to Jerusalem to fight in the Crusades, with Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson and Alexander Siddig in supporting roles.

  I watched the theatrical version, which is about fifty minutes shorter than the director’s cut, which means that the pacing is off, rushing through events yet still feeling slow. Presumably because of the truncation, subplots and secondary characters come and go with little explanation, making it hard to follow at times.

  Although the film is incredibly well made, and the production values are very high, it suffers from a self-seriousness that makes the story feel quite turgid and dull. There are some interesting ideas about…

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  Review by Rafael Jovine ★★★ 14

  Action!: The Scott Brothers – How To Get Screwed By Spielberg Twice W/ Ridley Scott
  DIRECTOR’S CUT

  It might have been because I should have seen the shorter version before the longer one, or because unlike "Gladiator," the movie lacked any really compelling characters you loved to root for or hate. Perhaps because, despite being good, Harry's score fell short of Zimmer's previous Oscar-winning glorious work. But for one reason or another, I couldn't adore this as many seems to do.

  This doesn't mean it's bad. In fact, during its three-hour runtime, I was never bored. A large part of its success was due to its ambitious nature, since Ridley clearly wanted to replicate the Gladiator's success, and even more,…

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  Review by Deckk ★★★ 6

  100-word review: Released in a post-9/11 period during which the 'demand' for Christian-Islamic fraternisation through cultural productions was felt even stronger than nowadays, Ridley Scott answered the call by ingraining his historic epic with this central theme; honourable as it may be, Kingdom of Heaven isn't exactly the most engaging medieval epic, and Orlando Bloom's character, whose morals are as perfect as his locks is partly at fault. The big scale battle is cool though, and the film did prompt me to watch a YouTube video on the crusades, so hey, it still taught me something in the end.

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  Review by Shawn Bu ★★★★½ 1

  The theatrical cut was just okay.

  The director‘s cut is a masterpiece! 

  It‘s a completely different film.
  Beautiful, compelling and still important.
  One of Ridley Scott‘s best films. Love it.

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  Review by Scott Anderson ★★★

  Is it weird that whenever I watch epic films or television shows of this ilk, I spend a decent amount of time thinking about how pathetic I would have been when faced with such circumstances?

  I understand it isn't a feasible conversation because had I existed then, I wouldn't know what life is like now so I would adapt to my surroundings, but still...I complain when I have to take the garbage out. That process is literally rolling two large receptacles about 40 feet each, and the key word in there is rolling. I don't even have to lift the cans, nowadays you just kinda pull em with a small percentage of force. Regardless, I bitch about it as if…