Kingdom of Heaven (2006, Blu-ray Disc)

Although faring poorly on the ticketbooth, Kingdom of Heaven is a finely elaborated movie. Taking historical characters from the timeframe between the 2nd and 3rd Crusades, Scott creates an epic story of the journeys and ultimate self discovery of a young man (Orlando Bloom), illegitimate son of a married
peasant woman and a noble's second son. Driven by mourn and bitterness over the death of his wife, Balian (Bloom) embarks along his newly discovered father (Liam Neeson) towards Jerusalem, seeking forgiveness for both himself an his wife, a suicide. Upon his father's unexpected death during the trip,
Balian ends up being Baron of Ibelin, and one of the King of Jerusalem's top
knights. Upon surviving a fierce storm at sea and a duel with a Muslim knight,
he finally gets to Jerusalem, holy city for Jews, Muslims and Christians alike.
There he will learn that a kingdom of conscience grows in the mind and heart, and such can never be abdicated. The Extended Director's cut Edition brings 45 extra minutes that explain a lot of things that the regular version leaves hanging or was heavily edited. A definite classic sword-n-sandal epic.

Historic theme, Great acting, Interesting theme concerning our day an age, Orlando Bloom is becoming a great actor.

a classic movie great actor nice story line will watch over and over and it had good action so that why i had to see it to bad they aint no part 2 it would had bin good two the blue ray is great

This is one of my favorite movie, an instant classic. Ridley Scott at his best! Orlando Bloom did his best in portraying the character, It could have been perfect if he has the body of Brad Pitt in TROY. I was happy that Liam Neeson was there, he is an Icon....

This movie is an epic on par with any 1 of the Lord of the Rings.
It has good character development, a great storyline, and blood-spewing action.
The Director's Cut makes this movie nice and long - 3hrs+!
Now, it is R, and justly so, considering there are many heads that get cutoff!
Unlike LotR, this ones not for the kiddies.

The BR disc itself is one of the best you could buy.
It features DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 Lossless that streams at 24MBps.
The 2.35:1 Widescreen preserves the original aspect ratio.
The case says the video is MPEG-2 @ 24MBps, but 24 must be an average, because the bit-rate was very near that most of the time and peaked to over 40MBps!
You gotta love Blu-Ray and "Max-bit-rate" because HD-DVD stops at 30MBps!

This is my first BR to own. I shopped for a while, before settling on this one.
I bought this one for its length, audio, and video.

Bluray.com is your ultimate Blu-Ray info source!

I guess I just expected too much before I watched this film. I am a student of medieval history, the crusades, and the Templars and I expected an intelligent film (which Ridley Scott usually produces). What I saw was an anti-war "epic" wanna-be.
The acting was OK. The battle scenes decent. The editing and camera work well done. The problem was the story. Historically, the film was surprisingly accurate, but the characters were not believable in this time period; specifically Orlando Bloom's character.
It was like a 20th (or now 21st) century man thrown in to a world of political, religious and social disorder. The time of the crusades was one of fanaticism based on beliefs that the only way to heaven was by being absolved of sin; the catholic church in their greed to rule the world, set out in a bloody conquest to destroy the Jews and Muslims in the Holy Land and the only way that they could get commoners to participate was to promise that heaven awaited them on the other side.
This was the dark ages (called that because it was before the age of enlightenment), a time when most people couldn't read, and even if they could, didn't have anything to read because everything was in latin, including the bible. People had to believe what the pope told them. If they didn't believe the pope, they had to do what their feudal lords told them to do (because the lords would have them arrested, killed, homeless, wifeless or childless if they didn't).
Essentially, this film tries to prove that men had free will in the dark/middle ages and history proves that this is not possible. Just as we cannot understand what it was like to live during the revolutionary war, the civil war, the hundred years war, or any other war from a previous time period, we cannot understand the massive, sweeping lack of power possessed by the individual during the time of the crusades. Only monarchs and clergy had power at this time and only they had the potential for understanding the political, religious climate of the day.
Even educated people of the time were stupid in the world of international relations because everything back then was based on personal greed, personal gain of the church and the monarchs.

Now, so far as those of you who claim that the movie is christian bashing, let me say this. DO SOME RESEARCH!!! The dark ages was a horrible time for the church, the catholic church especially. The church was controlled by evil men with agendas that did not include glorifying God. Heresy and Simony were rampant in and out of the church.

OK, so you don't care about the accuracy, and you just want a good action movie that takes place in the dark ages. Well then, this movie is for you.
It actually was a good movie with good acting and a good script. The problem that I have is that it just isn't believable with what I know about the time period. Had I not known about the time period, I probably would have rated the film higher.

So, in the end, what you have with this is a film that seems to be trying to make a point; that war is pointless. WELL, WE KNOW THAT. LOOK AT IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN.

What I don't understand is why this movie was made. It is entertaining, but at what cost. It does nothing to explain the period, the mistakes of the past. It is propaganda. I know, I expect too much. I will grant you that. Do what you will with this review, but I was let down by this movie. Too bad, really. It could have been a great movie.

As a blu-ray movie, you should buy it. Its one for the collection. The extremely clear scenery makes it seem like you can feel the breeze and heat and dirt of the time.

As a movie in itself, I like it because Ridley made a point of isolating in each character why we have different perspectives on the same issue. And why sometimes, we truly have no choice. The "bad guys" in the movie went to their deaths because of vanity, or did they believe too much.

Had this had been edited to make following the story better it could be Good to possibly excellent. But fair editing and what seems a loose script muddle down the story. Worth seeing but don't rush out to get it.