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Originally Posted by ariel
I just saw Kingdom of Heaven together with a friend of mine who is a maven of all things European medieval (clothings, material artefacts etc).
He loved this movie because the Crusader stuff looked quite authentic.
I found the swords being more or less in accord with what I know about Islamic armies of the time.
Otherwise, this movie is a pure and unadulterated junk. There is no plausible story that binds the plot together (there is no plot as such ...), the characters are unexplainable and do not develop at all and the entire 2 h 25 min enterprise plods thru with as much excitement as one can get driving slowly over a speed bump.
If you, guys, want to see a lot of Islamic-looking weapon props, - plunk $8.50 and buy a ticket.
If you are expecting a semblance of an intelligent and fascinating story of the Crusade era, rent yourself "Robin Hood" ( either the Kevin Costner's one or the cartoon version from Disney). Compared to the Kingdom of Heaven, these two are truly Shakesperean.....
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Ooh, thats a bit harsh.
Mind you, I've had few weeks to think think things over and look some things up, mainly in 'Saladin in his Time' by PH Newby and Hattin 1187 by david Nicolle, the only 2 books I have to hand at the moment.
Ridley Scott has taken bigger liberties with history than I thought. Salaheddin's Army at Hattin and Jerusalem was about 45,000 men, not 200,000. For some reason Count Raymond of Tripoli has become 'Tiberias' in the film (although he did have a castle at lake Tiberias), and Balian of Ibelin, who was a real person BTW, was at the battle of Hattin and was captured by Salaheddin. he was released after promising never to take up arms against Salaheddin again. A promise he broke by commanding the defenders at Jerusalem.
The other thing that irritated me is that Salaheddin's generals don't have names, you just have 'the hardliner' acted by Khaled En-Nabawy and 'the moderate' acted by Alexander Siddiq. I think these are meant to represent Salaheddin's 2 main commanders at Hattin. His nephew Taqi-ed-Din and Muzaffar-ed-Din Goqbori. The scenes showing Muslims praying are also wrong as they are all spaced out. Finally when Salaheddin is reciting the 'Fatiha' over the Muslim dead, it was edited in a way that most pious muslims would find rather blasphmemous.
Saying all that, I still liked this film.
