Kingdom of Heaven-Directors Cut (2005)

"Explodes with adventure.  Chicago Tribune
"Scott delivers rousing entertainment.  Rolling Stone
"...courageously relevant to what's going on in the real world.  William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Editor's Note Director Ridley Scott confronts hundreds of years of religious conflict in KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. An epic film set in Europe and the Middle East, the story follows one man's struggle to better himself and the world around him. Orlando Bloom stars as Balian, a French blacksmith who is mourning the deaths of his wife and baby when his estranged nobleman father (Liam Neeson) arrives and asks him to join the Crusades in Jerusalem. Mindful that conducting the Lord's work will help him atone for his sins, Balian agrees, and embarks on the perilous journey. Along the way, he reveals his gifts of inherent goodness and fair treatment of all human beings. Upon reaching Jerusalem, a city where his meager beginnings no longer matter, Balian earns respect and fealty, while the evil Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas) looks down his aristocratic nose at the former laborer. As he did in GLADIATOR, Scott explores the theme of a man who chooses his fate, instead of accepting the fate given to him at birth. Balian comes to life in Jerusalem, protecting the weak and defenseless as his father told him he must, and catching the eye of the beautiful Princess Sibylla (Eva Green), unhappily married to de Lusignan. Scott paints a stirring portrait of the struggle over Jerusalem among Christians, Jews, and Muslims. In doing so, he also shows the passionate fight for religious freedom. KINGDOM OF HEAVEN ably handles these delicate issues, effectively treating characters from all factions as individuals and not as stereotypes. By placing a virtuous man at the center of this conflict, Scott creates a powerful, universal story.

	Eva G Green
	Jeremy Irons
	Liam Neeson
	Orlando Bloom
	Arthur Max - Production Designer
	Dody Dorn - Editor
	Harry Gregson-Williams, et. al. - Original Music By
	John Mathieson - Cinematographer
	Lisa Ellzey - Executive Producer
	Ridley Scott - Producer
	Ridley Scott - Director
	William Monahan - Writer

New York Times
"Mr. Scott is a virtuoso of movie violence and he does not disappoint on that count here....Filled with scene after scene of choreographed mayhem." 05/06/2005 p.E1

Los Angeles Times
"Working from a strong script by William Monahan and making full use of that solid cast and his own impeccable skill with imagery, Scott has fashioned an impressive film that resonates with lessons..." 05/06/2005 p.E1

Rolling Stone
"Scott delivers rousing entertainment layered with provocation." 05/19/2005 p.84

Entertainment Weekly
"It's all very teeming and hordelike and impressive." 05/13/2005 p.60

Film Comment
"[The film] stirs up powerful half-buried aesthetic energies simply by venturing into the chosen terrain....Best of all perhaps is Orlando Bloom's first glimpse of Jerusalem, an instant of digitized splendor that reawakens the occult dream that cinema can somehow literally transport us into the past." 05/01/2005 p.71-72

Uncut
"Where Scott scores is in the cinematography and set-pieces, with vast armies surging across sun-baked sand in almost Kurosawa-like ballets of light and colour." 07/01/2005 p.129

Sight and Sound
"There's a wealth of charisma among the supporting cast..." 12/01/2005 p.90

James Berardinelli's ReelViews 8 of 10
Kingdom of Heaven remains a hugely enjoyable experience. The battle scenes, especially the 1187 siege of Jerusalem, are handled expertly. There's plenty of the same "wow!" factor that was evident in The Two Towers, when hundreds of thousands of orcs assaulted Helm's Deep. Scott keeps the action tightly concentrated on Balian, never losing focus the way Oliver Stone did in Alexander. Kingdom of Heaven runs nearly 2 1/2 hours, but is tautly paced so as to not seem nearly that long. - James Berardinelli

Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
The first thing to be said for Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven is that Scott knows how to direct a historical epic. I might have been kinder to his Gladiator had I known that Troy and Alexander were in my future, but Kingdom of Heaven is better than Gladiator -- deeper, more thoughtful, more about human motivation and less about action. - Roger Ebert

Variety.com 9 of 10
Kingdom of Heaven navigates through the minefield of the Crusades and, by extension, the contentious background of Christian-Muslim relations in ways both shrewd and calculated. Genuinely spectacular and historically quite respectable, Ridley Scott's latest epic is at its strongest in conveying the savagery spawned by fanaticism, as well as in creating a convincing view of a late 12th century when East and West co-existed, then came to blows for neither the first nor last time. Dramatically, however, there is a vaguely programmatic feel to the drastic upward mobility of a simple French blacksmith to the ruling echelon of the Latin Kingdom. - Todd McCarthy