KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (2005)
Directed by Ridley Scott
Starring: Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons, Eva Green

Reviewed by Anthony Saidy

Watson Scale Rating (0 being worst and 6 being perfect): 5

Ridley (BLACK HAWK DOWN) Scott has done two extraordinary feats: reproducing a 12th-century war in vivid detail, and forcing U.S. audiences to re-examine their prejudices about the Muslim world. The title refers to an interlude during the Crusades, when the Kingdom of Jerusalem had a peaceable Christian king and Muslims, Christians and Jews coexisted. It’s not that the Muslim world and its famed commander, Salahuddin, a Kurd raised in Damascus, had reconciled to the European conquest of their holy land. (The men of the Cross had massacred lots of Jews and Orthodox Christians too, en route to filling the streets of Jerusalem with rivers of Muslim blood.). But, according to the movie, peace might have held if not for certain Christian hotheads spoiling for a fight – which they were bound to lose to a much superior force.

Salahuddin (Saladin) allows the vanquished safe conduct to the sea, and in a scene cheered by audiences in diverse Beirut, reverently replaces a fallen cross on an altar. That sent me to the Koran, where I learned that Jesus started preaching at age two. Gosh, if Bush had known that Saladin is revered by every Muslim down to today, would he have called his misbegotten war on Iraq a “crusade?” Excuse me, if Bush had known any history at all. For at last, the Crusaders were driven out.

The well-written, spectacular, film ends with a comment that today there is still trouble in the “Kingdom of Heaven.