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Kingdom of Heaven
EMAILPRINT20th Century Fox Pictures

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 40 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 207 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Drama | Romance | War
Written by: William Monahan
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 6, 2005
DVD: October 11, 2005
Running Time: 145 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / Spain / UK
Summary
RATING: R for strong violence and epic warfare
Starring Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Brendan Gleeson, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson, Alexander Siddig, David Thewlis, and Jouko Ahola
An epic adventure about a common man who finds himself thrust into a decades-long war, a stranger in a strange land. He serves a doomed king, falls in love with an exotic forbidden queen, and rises to the knighthood. Ultimately, he must protect the people of Jerusalem from overwhelming forces while striving to keep a fragile peace. (20th Century Fox)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: A Good Year Alien: The Director's Cut American Gangster Black Hawk Down Blade Runner: The Director's Cut Body of Lies G.I. Jane Gladiator Hannibal Matchstick Men Thelma & Louise White Squall
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A gargantuan epic, a historical adventure-drama of overwhelming visual grandeur.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Bloom finally comes into his own as a man here, somberly thoughtful and melancholic. The elfin archer of "The Lord of the Rings" and the trivial boy-toy of "Troy" have been forgotten.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Better than "Gladiator" -- deeper, more thoughtful, more about human motivation and less about action.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Its concept is gutsy, its script is literate and intelligent, its visuals and cinematic craftsmanship are mouth-dropping, and its vision of the insanity of various religions vying to dominate the real estate of the Holy Land comes through with great power.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
In its depiction of a fleeting, but nevertheless factual, peace in the Middle East, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven may seem a more quixotic Hollywood fantasy than all six Star Wars movies lumped together.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Genuinely spectacular and historically quite respectable, Ridley Scott's latest epic is at its strongest in conveying the savagery spawned by fanaticism.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Fulfills the requirements of grand-scale moviemaking while serving as a timely reminder that in the conflict between Christianity and Islam it was the Christians who picked the first fight.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Full of astonishments, not the least of which are its ideas.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Scott and company have gotten so accomplished at re-creating history that the results have a welcome offhanded quality, making them spectacular without seeming to be showing off.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
The story's parallels with the present are sometimes inescapable, as when Saladin's fireballs catapulted at Balian's castle strike an eerie resemblance to the "shock and awe" of the U.S.-led coalition's initial assault on Iraq.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Screenwriter William Monahan has fashioned an intelligent and highly topical epic. Director Ridley Scott has brought it home with banners flying.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Scott's cast is like a grand orchestra with various performers filling the roles of instruments: Thewlis a wise, ironic oboe; Neeson a stout cello; Norton a slightly battered flute. As it happens, the piece they're playing is a piano concerto and the keyboard -- that is, Bloom -- isn't big enough to match.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
A rousing, politically correct, Muslim-sympathetic, $140 million take on the Crusades.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Odd as it is to say, Kingdom of Heaven loses its momentum the more Balian gets religion.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Kingdom of Heaven may have problems, but it delivers.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Bill Gallo
So, if you want to see this loud but rather ordinary epic, don't expect its tricked-up cultural and theological messages to carry much water. For entertainment value, it's hard to beat the climactic siege of Jerusalem, a Ridley Scott-perfect half-hour that matches anything in "Troy" or "Gladiator" for sheer, bloody, helmet-bashing mayhem.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
The battle skirmishes here mix sudden violence with slow-motion artistry. The attractive cast can sell an obsession or articulate a conundrum with equal fervor.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Massoud plays Saladin magnetically, and his arrival only illustrates how many opportunities Kingdom misses. Another, better movie would have made him the focus.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Scott, working from a script by William Monahan, is so busy balancing our sympathies, making sure no one gets offended, that he has made a pageant of war that would have gotten a thumbs-up from Eleanor Roosevelt.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
But if the film disappoints on an intellectual level, at least it doesn't skimp on pageantry. This is, without question, one of the most beautifully crafted, visually thrilling war pictures ever made -- a painterly spectacle that leaves you looking for Caravaggio's name in the end credits.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
It's hard to say with assurance whether the flaw is in Bloom's performance or in Monahan's politically correct conception of Balian, precociously secular for a Crusader.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
What sucks the wind out of the movie's sails is the vacuum at its core.
Read Full Review >Premiere Peter Debruge
Although Scott seems to be making a point about both parties' ongoing feud for Jerusalem , the movie seems more like a classic Western than a contemporary political allegory.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
For all its scale, grandeur, historical context and political brass, "Kingdom" is no more compelling a period drama than last year's "Alexander."
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
The movie does what any self-respecting politician would do: sidestep the issues, soft-pedal mortal costs, talk a fat game, and divert your attention away from history with exercises in spectacle and power.
Read Full Review >Empire Ian Nathan
A frustratingly thin epic. You're left wanting more exposition, more character development, the tidying up of loose ends.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
One imagined that a movie about the Crusades would be gallant and mad; one feared that it might stoke some antiquated prejudice. But who could have dreamed that it would produce this rambling, hollow show about a boy?
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Fails to rouse any passion. A potentially great subject is frittered away, though this being a Scott movie, there's style to spare.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
A handful of nifty battle scenes and some decent performances aren't quite enough to make Kingdom memorable.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Scott's 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.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
Dramatically, even a persuasive supporting cast gets Heaven only so far.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Bottom line: Kingdom of Heaven is the most exciting action-adventure yarn so far this year. Just don't expect anything deeper.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
The movie espouses a kind of Unitarian ecumenical egalitarianism that has about as much to do with medieval times as quantum physics. No one should be offended except -- of course -- those who like movies that excite the mind as well as the pulse.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
I'd have a lot more respect for Scott if he were actually the virtuoso he pretends to be. "Gladiator" had lousy, disjunctive action, and Kingdom of Heaven is even more maladroit.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Ultimately, despite striving mightily to give everyone a fair shake, the film kindled the ire of conservative Christians and Muslims anyway.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
A mostly lumbering, occasionally rousing epic that walks a bizarre line between historical fact and Hollywood wishful thinking.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufmann
While there's gore by the gallon, inventiveness is in short supply.
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
This is muddled and oppressive storytelling (the script is by William Monahan) dotted with elaborate but weightless battle sequences.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
To introduce an archetype like this to western audiences -- as the world weathers culturally and religiously demonizing times -- may have been worth this whole flawed movie. Too bad the story didn't just start with him.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 207 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Anonymous gave it a9:
Terrific movie. The acting was great by everyone, even Bloom who is unfairly getting criticized by some. Truly epic story-telling and filming.
SK gave it an8:
This movie is an epic in every sense, especially the director's cut version (45 minutes longer). The is visually incredible with a a score to only make it more outstanding. The acting is very good too with Liam Neeson, Eva Green and Ghassan Massoud (Saladin) all being excellent. Edward Norton's King Baldwin IV carried a great weight in the film and was one of the best parts of it. And of course I should mention Orlando Bloom, who will probably pleasantly surprise many who watch the movie. His performance had many good things to it. A blacksmith who by way of his father's nobility and land can become a great knight in Jerusalem, Bloom was definitely solid. I understand many critical of the movie would have liked it to be a bit "madder" in terms of how it presented the crusades, but reading the Ridley Scott and William Moynahan (writer) wanted to retell this story by a fictionalized account with a bit of a exaggerated benefit of the doubt to peace. I think this movie had much of what an epic should be. Perhaps not quite a Braveheart, but compares to Gladiator and has a sense of purpose and epic story-telling that set it in a higher class than Troy and 300 when comparing "sword-and-sandal" epics.
[Anonymous] gave it an8:
I liked it. The third act was weak to be sure and Eva Green sucked like hell, but beyond that, everything else is great.
Kieran gave it a6:
The best version of this film is the Directors Cut. Its adds 45 mins extra and is worth every second. Directors cut is a 10/10. This version misses too much and spoils the navative.
[Anonymous] gave it a7:
Bring it down to a 59/100, than I'll agree. This movie started great, but unfortunately by the third act the film starts to go downhill. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this movie, but it definitely is the weakest of its genre. In the order from greatest to least, it would be: Braveheart, Gladiator, 300, Troy, and then Kingdom of Heaven. I give this a 6.5/10.
Bob S. gave it a10:
Loved the action, The amazing picture and the the way you come away realizing there are two sides to every war. and usually both sides have pathetically shallow motives.
Mark K. gave it a5:
Ridley Scott should take lessons in how to use action scenes to aid character development from Peter Jackson. 'Kingdom' drags to a crawl too often. The only effective scenes in 'Kingdom of Heaven' are the siege scenes you've already seen in L.O.R. Overall, a 'Kingdom' of a disappointment.
