Kingdom Of Heaven (DVD)

ridley scotts take on the crusades is beatifully filmed with an excellent cast and superb action scenes.Very moveing and involving film with excellent extras which in my view improve this epic.

I like the film with its historical account of the crusades, the film shows that muslims, christians and jews all used to live within close proximity under peace, until barbaric christians started attacking the muslims.
Even though the film portrays balladin as the films hero the real hero was Saladin who shown true islamic manners and values.
The second dvd provided which shows fact or fiction about the films story shows that the we in the west learnt many things from our contact with the muslims during the crusades

I decided to buy this film having already seen it and owned a copy that has gone walk about. This action adventure epic film is a fantasy based on the crusades at the time of Richard the Lionheart, and is historically condensed rather than accurate. I won't dwell on its inaccuracy because what makes the film for me is its ability to transport you back to the Middle Ages and into another world, where larger questions of life and death loomed and where the balance of history seemed on a knife-edge. Apart from Richard, the actors and characters do an okay job; (Richard seems to have walked out of a Robin Hood film as the benign Daddy-figure who has come to sort things out - in reality he was a fiery fighter with a shock of red hair who quarreled with most of his allies.) I don't really see the point of him arriving at the end. The main point of the film is the loss of Jerusalem which occurred when Richard was still a teenager learning to govern Aquitaine. The setting and the battle scenes are good as is the fighting at the walls of Jerusalem. The significance of Jerusalem to the Christian world is ambiguous - the Arabs had been there since before Mohamed, and the wider picture of the Christian West opposing an expansionist, belligerent Tajuk Turkish army that resulted in forging the Ottoman Empire is not really put across in the film. But I liked the subtlety of the script with conclusions for Bloom's character like "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you", even though the ending was pure fantasy - as if the former queen of Jerusalem would settle for the life of a blacksmith's wife. I feel that one thing the film does do, like the Besson film "Joan of Arc", is that it introduces people, especially the new generations, to the Crusades - an exciting period of history - in an exciting and vigorous way, whereas they can be presented as dry, religiously fanatic, contradictory and therefore meaningless episodes we should be ashamed of, especially when they are studied at school. Too much of our history is condemned today by ignorant people with an axe to grind; films like "Kingdom of Heaven" help to get our youngsters interested enough to want to know more.

I WAS VERY DISAPPOINTED WITH MY PURCHASE AS THE FIRST DISC HAD A VERY LOUD NOISE ON IT WHICH MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO WATCH WITHOUT BEING DISTRACTED BY THE NOISE.

I HAVE AN ADDICTION FOR CLASSIC MOVIES THAT HAS 1OOO'S OF EXTRAS,ALTHOUGH THEY MAY BE COMPUTER GENERATED.THIS IS SUCH A MOVIE. PLENTY OF ACTION;A PLAUSABLE STORY LINE;SHAME ABOUT THE LEADING ACTOR. COULD HAVE HAD A BETTER CHOICE.
JUST FOR THE RECORD MY MOST FAVORITE MOVIE OF ALL TIME IS ZULU FOLLOWED BY THE SEARCHERS (JOHN WAYNE)GIVES YOU SOME IDEA WHY I ENJOYED THIS MOVIE SO MUCH.

First of all, what can beat Gladiator, with lines like "father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife", etc. and Russell Crowe chopping off heads. Kingdom of Heaven is a similar heroic fable yet the good and evil polarity is slightly more ambiguous. I would say it was vastly better than Alexander. Ridley Scott's style (cinematography and music) as seen in Black Hawk Down and Gladiator also lend a wonderful historical ambiance. Orlando Bloom does a fine job as the lead, and the French actress is fantastic (and beautiful), but my favorite lead was the Leper King and the wise nobility of his character. The battle scenes are excellent (including one in falling snow in which the snowflakes seem to hang in the air) and the armies look very historically realistic - this is a very good-looking epic. Formulaic perhaps, but well-executed. Kingdom of Heaven made me feel like leaving the "blacksmithy" that is our dull modern urban existence and finding a cause worth fighting for, but Crusades just aren't what they used to be =D