When one thinks back to Ridley Scott’s many great films, it can be tricky to simply cull them down to a top-tier: Alien; Blade Runner; The Duellists; Thelma & Louise; Gladiator; The Martian. There are just so many. Yet one that almost never gets its due is the criminally overlooked Kingdom of Heaven, a masterclass of grandiose epic storytelling that is every bit as layered and emotionally complex as all of the above pictures. Perhaps even more so.
Trust us, if you’ve only seen the theatrical cut of Kingdom of Heaven, you basically haven’t seen it at all.
Indeed, 20th Century Fox made the calculated choice in 2005 to have their thrice Oscar nominated director cut his sprawling meditation on Crusades, codes of honor, and how their auras still linger today down to a paltry 144 minutes. While that is still on the lengthy side for a modern action movie, the emphasis was just that: the gore and glory that comes with medieval battle sequences. This also, in essence, robbed a very spiritual movie of its soul.
Consequently, the Kingdom of Heaven many have viewed is the barebones (read: boring) version of its events. The director’s cut, meanwhile, likely stands as the most striking improvement from a film edit to date. Whereas typical “Ultimate,” “Director,” or “Extended” cuts are tedious expansions of the same film, with all the excess plodding therein, the director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven is a noticeably different film. And at 190 minutes, it’s a great one too.
Set in 1184 in the relative time of peace that existed in Christendom between the Second and Third Crusade, Kingdom of Heaven opens on a fascinating historical hotspot. For 85 years, Jerusalem has been held by the Christian descendants of knights who conquered the Holy Land in a river of blood during the First Crusade. If this in hindsight seems like an untenable position and a short blip in world history, keep in mind that Jerusalem has remained in modern Israeli hands for a shorter period of time thus far. Surprisingly though, a state of détente has emerged between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the First Sultan of Damascus, Saladin (Ghassan Massoud).
In is in this context that a Crusader knight and Lord of Ibelin (Liam Neeson) returns to France to reclaim his bastard son, Balian (Orlando Bloom). He raises the boy up to the rank of knight and soon-to-be heir of his dusty lands. But most importantly, he puts him in the center of a bloody game of thrones in the Jerusalem court where a Leper King named Baldwin (Edward Norton) attempts to keep a peace in his final days before his disease claims his life.
The strength of Kingdom of Heaven is pooled from its tapestry narrative that is mostly abandoned in the theatrical cut. But in its richer full presentation, Kingdom of Heaven is more than one knight’s journey; it’s a golden kingdom’s fall from grace. And it is told with a stunning ensemble cast. Surrounding Bloom is a shifting repertoire of amazing character actors doing amazing character work, including Neeson, Jeremy Irons, David Thewlis, Michael Sheen, Brendan Gleeson, Alexander Siddig, and Marton Csokas. But the two most important players are Edward Norton and Eva Green as the royal brother and sister Baldwin and Sibylla.
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