AHHHH! I haven’t written for the Bloon in ages! I have two games and about three movies to review! AHHHHH!
Sorry, kiddos. My laziness and my busy schedule teamed up and gang banged me. I’ll try to do better.
Title: Kingdom of Heaven
Genre (Movie): Historical Fiction/Action
Quickrating: 8.5/10
Description: A pleasant surprise of a film, with good acting, good action, and good accuracy.
First of all, I’d like to point out my respect for Orlando Bloom. I may hate him because he’s no more than a teenage girl heartthrob, but every once in a while, I realize that he can indeed act quite well, and that makes me ashamed for thinking of clever ways to mess up that pretty face of his. Talent and good looks…you just don’t see it often enough. Of course, that combination of his ruins my only chance of getting into Hollywood. Bastard.
The movie, if you didn’t know, is about the Crusades, and thankfully shows them for what they really were: cruel, stupid, mean, and asanine attempts that show the hypocrisy of Christianity in those times. Kudos for not taking the easy route and glorifying them. It has a good number of massive fights, but also focuses a lot on character development, which I thought was very nice. I was almost expecting an Alexander-style movie without the unnecessarily large amounts of homosexuality. I was wonderfully proven wrong by the in-depth monologues and scenes between two or three characters, which were seperated by wonderfully conducted battle sequences, as opposed to battle sequences seperated by monologues.
The blood and gore level is really just enough to earn it an R rating, but not over-the-top in any way. It really is rather realistic in it’s bloodletting, as opposed to a movie such as Kill Bill or the such. Of course, there are a few times where our younger, less adrenaline/aldosterone (sorry kids, Biology on the mind for the SAT II) driven readers may want to turn their heads, but when somebody’s getting stabbed in the throat, there’s gonna be a good amount of red fluid spurting out, ok?
Well done with the sword fighting, too. I took a few longsword classes back in my day, and the movie faithfully replicates the style and movement of the type of longsword that I used, anyway. Although I must say that there is no way that a newbie to the sword like Bloom’s character could pick it up that easily, but eh, the movie can’t stretch on THAT long.
Really my only complaint deals with some unanswered questions. Why are the war-mongerers so angry against the Muslims? Why so violent? How did the king get to be the king with his…..er….condition? And where are they going at the end of the movie? These unanswered questions brought the movie down slightly, but nothing too big. But the acting is great, the action is fun, and the movie is informative. A very nice flick to start off the summer.
And once again, bravo, Mr. Bloom, bravo.
“Of course, that combination of his ruins my only chance of getting into Hollywood. Bastard.”
Bwahahahah! That made me laugh!
^_^… To answer your last question, I believe that the movie was simply to show part of the crusades, namely the part where peace is restored. But later in history (100 years? 10? I forgot) good ol’ king somethingorother decides to support Crusades II (now on sale at a church near you) and the hole thing gets repeated again… Hope that helped!
Actually, this movie takes place somewhere in the third or second crusade, and King Richard the Lionheart, who appears in the end, leads the fifth or fourth crusade, or something. The specifics elude me. I meant….where is Bloom’s and what’sherface’s characters going in the end, not….the Crusaders in general.