Every boy who ever played Crusades will weep in joy at Sir Ridley Scott’s anti-war war-epic. His detailed account of a blacksmith who becomes a Knight in the service of Church and Kingdom is everything the game was: massing armies, rearing horses, dust, nobility and pride. Oh, and a few thousand dead bodies. Balian (Orlando Bloom with fetching beard) joins the Crusade and before long is defending Jerusalem - the Kingdom of Heaven of his father’s dream, a place of “peace between Christian and Muslim”– from both Islam’s Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) and blood-thirsty Knights Templar.

Kingdom of Heaven is a beautiful film made more intriguing for its bipartisan politics. Scott can be trusted to dress his movie with impeccable and accurate detail that exudes authority and romance even in the most bitter battles. His approach managed to upset fundamentalists even before the film was released. Yet rather like the boys game, Kingdom of Heaven seems to be missing some of the action. There is a troubling absence of motivation and context (contemporary or modern) that leaves one feeling strangely unfulfilled. Bailan the blacksmith stumbled onto history’s main stage and, with the help of Crusades For Dummies, became a brilliant tactician and defender of the Holy City. It’s a big jump and oddities like this undermine the film’s emotional resonance and our belief in its exploits. Restless camera work that splendidly captures digital armies fighting on a magical scale has, post-Rings, worn thin through familiarity.

Kingdom of Heaven relies on ideas that, without context, are dangerously two-dimensional. That said, any film with two dimensions remains better than one with none.

// COLIN FRASER