KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

(Ridley Scott, 2005)

Balian: You go to certain death.
Templar: All death is certain.

If Kingdom of Heaven - the Directors Cut, not the manifestly inferior theatrical version, which is 45 minutes shorter - starred anybody other than Orlando Bloom in the lead role, it would be one of Ridley Scott's very best films. Bloom has never been better than in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, where he is required mainly to seem unearthly and beautiful - Legolas doesn't really have any personality in the realistic sense. He is a heroic ideal, and Bloom, blessed with his good looks, manages that without difficulty. In much of his other work he is similarly required to look pretty, but he is hopelessly out of his depth when asked to express any actual emotion. In Kingdom of Heaven, where he is asked to handle huge emotions - grief, despair, love - he is blank-faced. His single expression is a sort of empty smoulder - he seems to have walked off the set of an aftershave commercial. His character, Balian, is driven through the film by a search for his faith, yet Bloom looks like he's searching for his iPod and isn't all that bothered if he finds it or not.
It's a pity, because he is surrounded by a truly classy cast of mainly European supporting actors, most of whom seem totally at home in the Medieval World Scott painstakingly, beautifully creates. Liam Neeson, David Thewlis, Jeremy Irons, Kevin McKidd, Martin Csokas and Brendan Gleeson all have big masculine presences, and Bloom seems dwarfed by all of them in his shared scenes. Eva Green is a fascinatingly complicated leading lady here, and Edward Norton offers a somehow Brando-esque but very effective voice performance as the masked Leper-King, Baldwin.
This is a complex, thematically ambitious epic, spending much of its running time detailing the political and religious divisions which beset the factions within the Holy Land during the Crusades. It is also an exploration of ideology and of the difference between faith and religion. That could be dull, but screenwriter William Monaghan, who wrote the dazzling dialogue for The Departed, shows that he can do the same for a vastly different world here, though there are a few clunky exchanges. Its contemporary resonances, dealing as it does with a battle in the Middle East between Christian and Muslim forces, are unavoidable and well-handled. It is fair-handed, with Saladin, the Commander of the Saracens, played by the charismatic Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud, emerging as one of the best and most likeable characters, while many of the Christians are plainly rabid animals using their religion as justification for slaughter.
The real glory of this film, though, is Ridley Scott's direction. It seems a synthesis of much of what he has done before - the reconstruction of Old Worlds in Gladiator and 1492 and The Duellists is here attempted on an even bigger canvas, and it is achieved more vividly and more beautifully than in any of those films. The ferocity of the battle scenes in Gladiator and Black Hawk Down is replicated here, again on a bigger, more beautiful scale. The contrast between the wintery mud and misery of Continental Europe in that era with the exotic melting pot of the Holy Land is brilliantly evoked. Indeed, the whole thing is textural masterpiece, always sensuous and visceral, with moments of pure poetry scattered throughout the story.
Its commercial failure is still no surprise. Aside from the gaping hole at its heart where a leading man should be, it's flaws are obvious and even its strengths are partially uncommercial - it is more complex and adult than any of the other modern epics, its conclusions about religion and war too ambiguous for popular acceptance. If Gladiator used a simple revenge story to great effect, Kingdom of Heaven has no such basic structure, its tale of a man searching for faith and redemption far too interior to drive such a big narrative emotionally. The film it most reminds me of is Anthony Mann's The Fall of the Roman Empire, another Epic with a miscast leading man and a downbeat, complex tone.

TROY

(Wolfgang Petersen, 2004)

Has ever a major actor been quite so uncomfortable in period or non-American roles as Brad Pitt? Here he just about gets by on an extremely Californian type of sun-kissed buff beauty, but every single time he opens his mouth to speak, this film runs into a big problem; its protagonist - the legendary Achilles - is faintly ridiculous. That is only made more obvious by the fact that his direct opponent and mirror image, Eric Bana as Hector, is a serious, intense, magnetic presence.
Written by David Benioff in what now seems like a shaky dry-run for the sort of believable heroic historical drama he perfected on Game of Thrones, Troy now seems like a commendably old-fashioned sword and sandal epic, filled with lots of talk of honour, politics and the Gods. Only it's never really all that good.
The casting is one problem. Not only is Pitt horrendously miscast, but Diane Kruger , while obviously beautiful, makes a curiously dull Helen, and Orlando Bloom is his wooden, pretty worst as Paris, which robs the relationship meant to drive the entire plot of any interest or emotion. The old British thespians in smaller roles do better; Peter O'Toole and Brian Cox chew scenery (and there's a lot of it to chew on) to good effect as duelling Kings Agamemnon and Priam, Brendan Gleeson is flat-out terrifying as Menelaus, and Sean Bean is so good as a wily, political old Odysseus you find yourself wishing the film was about him instead.
Benioff's script is filled with good ideas. Achilles here is a warrior as rock star, lounging in a tent surrounded by groupies, followed by a cadre of warriors who worship him, but lazy, contemptuous of normal people, with a seeming death wish. That is all undone by Pitt's empty, superficial work, as is his relationship with Brisseus (Rose Byrne), a Priestess who is taken captive.
In contrast, Hector's love for his wife, family and country is simple and believable, which unbalances this narrative precariously (as does the fact that Agamemnon is such an unscrupulous villian, while Priam is just a bit of an earnest fool).
The material that does work is the spectacle, when it has not been spoiled by some shabby cgi. Huge battle scenes are efficiently directed by Petersen, without ever containing anything that is truly special or even memorable. The fighting has obviously been carefully considered, and Achilles moves like a dancer in stark contrast to the heavy armour and forceful strikes favoured by everybody else.
The climax - the arrival of the Wooden horse (nicely designed here) into Troy and all that follows - feels quite rushed, and in any event, the emotional climax has come and gone almost an hour before.
The duel between Achilles and Hector is easily the best thing in the film. So clearly shot and edited it feels like somebody other than Petersen must have been involved, it is visceral and gripping throughout, and the outcome is at least stirring in a way nothing else in this film is.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

(Paul W.S. Anderson, 2011) By following the broader outlines of Alexandre Dumas' classic tale in his adaptation, Anderson just might have succeeded in making The Three Musketeers his most roundly entertaining film. Dumas' novel is so familiar that the strength of its archetypes and beautifully simple plot construction are beyond doubt. The way principle hero D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman, who plays him as a bland, sexless, even Bieberesque teen idol type) meets each of the three in turn, all of the heroes defined along the way, then teams up with them against Richlieu's Guard, is a miraculous piece of storytelling, and it survives more or less unchanged through every adaptation. Here Anderson casts three beefy Brits as the legendary Musketeers. Athos (Matthew Macfayden), Porthos (Ray Stevenson) and Aramis (Luke Evans) are introduced as a sort of elite commando squad, on a mission in Venice to steal some old plans by DaVinci for a flying war machine. Here Anderson establishes the films distinctive aesthetic; composing his shots in 3D, he emphasises the awesome scale and elaborate ostentatiousness of the royal buildings which house much of the story. He has always had a good way with a clean, clear action sequence, and here he keeps the swordplay visceral and simple, often using slow motion to punctuate a particularly well-choreographed passage. There is also a definite steampunk element to the design of gadgets and weapons, from the airships which are the most significant departure from Dumas to Athos' clockwork ninja gadgetry in the opening scene. The characters are generally simple, there for their impact in the action scenes and the varying shades they bring. The Musketeers are differentiated through their fighting styles - Athos is efficient, brutal, and Macfayden plays him with a mournful air, while Stevenson's brawny Porthos is all jolly brute force and Evans makes Aramis a precise, stylish fighter and the quietest, most cerebral of the three. They are joined in the action scenes by Anderson's muse, Milla Jovovich, as Milady, here an ass-kicking acrobatic spy with a penchant for betrayal. Anderson and his screenwriters (among them Andrew Davies, who has much experience of adapting classic novels) follow much of Dumas' plot and add in their own elements and twists. The immature but goodhearted King (Freddie Fox, comic to just the right degree) is there, Richlieu (Christoph Waltz, on cruise control) is the evil mastermind, and D'Artagnan has the usual love interest in the form of the Queen's Lady-in-waiting, Constance (Gabriella Wilde, whose pretty woodenness matches Lerman's blandness). The villains are the strongest element; Orlando Bloom has a high old time as the foppish, moustache- twirling Buckingham, and Mads Mikkelsen gives eyepatch-wearing Rochefort a scarily dead-eyed intensity. It is all nicely paced, ripping at speed through the story and forcing much of the plot through action scenes, there are several good gags (James Corden plays the comic relief), it always looks wonderful, and if it never matches Richard Lester's classic 1970s Musketeers movies, it is a solid, occasionally inspired attempt at a modern spin on this classic family adventure film.