 It has been a long while since a cast-of-thousands epic has performed strongly at the box office. The poor showing of Oliver Stone's Alexander last year, preceded by a dreadful performance for King Arthur suggested to some analysts that the historical spectacle might be traveling down the same road as hand-drawn animation. But some critics are predicting that Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven may revive the genre. "Equally at home in the future and the past, Mr. Scott seems born to direct epics," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "His ravishing visual style, characterized by a fetishistic attention to surface detail and unrelenting beauty, can work wonders with big subjects, but this is also a director who needs actors powerful enough to shoulder narrative and emotional extremes." She suggests that the actors in this film, led by Orlando Bloom and Eva Green, don't make the grade. Likewise Jack Mathews writes in the New York Daily News: "For all its scale, grandeur, historical context and political brass, Kingdom is no more compelling a period drama than last year's Alexander - and Kingdom's star, Orlando Bloom, would have trouble filling even Colin Farrell's sandals." Bloom, a classically trained British actor who achieved stardom as Legolas in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, takes the brunt of most of the critical complaints about the movie. "It might be because he is buttressed by so many manly, vital performances that Bloom comes off all the more boyish and withdrawn, a Shetland pony among stallions," writes Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer. But Bloom also has his supporters. "Is Orlando Bloom enough of a star to sustain a $100 million costume drama?" asks Stephen Hunter rhetorically in the Washington Post. "The answer turns out to be yes. ... He is able to dominate the second half of this film in the old-fashioned movie-star way." Although several critics dismiss the movie, set during the Crusades, as "politically correct," Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times suggests that Scott deserves a great deal of credit for taking on such a controversial subject. "Few people will be capable of looking at Kingdom of Heaven objectively," Ebert writes. "I have been invited by both Muslims and Christians to view the movie with them so they can point out its shortcomings. When you've made both sides angry, you may have done something right." And Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times writes that Scott has been able to deliver "that rare big-star blockbuster ... that still manages to have something relevant to say." Moreover, Turan concludes, "Scott and company have gotten so accomplished at recreating history that the results have a welcome offhanded quality, making them spectacular without seeming to be showing off. No matter what we're looking at, we're thinking, "It must have looked like that." For a film like Kingdom of Heaven, a better compliment would be hard to find." |
