Walked out of Kingdom of Heaven

[pegkerr]

I couldn't take more than twenty minutes of it. I had mixed feelings going in. I have never worshipped at the pretty boy altar of Orlando Bloom, but I kinda wanted to see him in his new movie. I was interested in the other actors, and the idea of a collision of cultures, a struggle between two faiths. But not enough to sit through all that mayhem. Ick. I have picked up from the reviews that the "clash of faiths" may not be there anyway; someone at the heart of planning it (who? Was it the director? The producer? the screenwriter?) was an agnostic, and perhaps as a result all the major characters' actions do not spring from any well-spring of conviction that shapes their motivation.

Now that I think of it, i don't think I've ever seen any of the really big iconic R-rated war movies. I never saw Saving Private Ryan or Braveheart. Or Gladiator, for that matter, Ridley Scott's other big opus. I don't go to a war movie because I want to revel in the gore. (I NEVER go to horror movies, either). But I want to see that the characters are struggling for something they believe in.

Comments

[liamere.livejournal.com]

And the mayhem only gets worse later on - there's a bit of nifty siegemachine destruction, but if you don't go in to that sort of thing it'd probably be dull.

Heck, if you saw RotK then you've already seen it all.