c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) For years, Muslim, Christian and Jew have lived in an uneasy peace. Tensions have been contained. Religious freedoms have been granted. Cultures have coexisted.

But there are always those who do not see a profit in peace. And urged on by extremists, their easily influenced forces march blindly and self-righteously into battle, secure in the happy knowledge that “to kill an infidel is not murder _ it is the path to heaven.”

It is a measure of how little things have changed in the world that these incidents _ drawn from the 12th century and now onscreen in “Kingdom of Heaven” _ feel depressingly current.

It is a sign of how much things have changed in Hollywood that the violent fundamentalists bent on holy war here aren’t the Muslims, but the Christians.

This is not, perhaps, a particularly revolutionary view among historians. The Crusaders were a brutal, bloody lot _ the great Muslim warrior Saladin was said to be appalled by their savagery _ and their endless wars were always as much about plunder as religion. Noble quests and gentle, perfect knights are the stuff of Chaucer and pretty tapestries.

It’s a more controversial approach, though, for moviemakers. We’ve had revisionist history since the ’60s: a gay Richard the Lion-Hearted in “The Lion in Winter” and the knockabout knights of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” But a movie about the Crusades in which the worst villain is the Christian patriarch of Jerusalem? And the noblest hero is a Muslim warrior? That’s news.

It’s not new, though, for director Ridley Scott. Although he’s known best as a director of beautiful epics, from his 1978 debut with “The Duellists,” Scott’s movies usually have been about the insane futility of violence. “Gladiator,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Blade Runner” _ for all their action, not one of those films celebrated conflict, or suggested that combat was always preferable to compromise.

The trouble with “Kingdom of Heaven,” though, is that William Monahan’s script _ which freely invents characters and transposes events _ can’t find a hero worthy of that theme. As Balian, a blacksmith turned Crusader, Orlando Bloom should embody a character who passes through some sort of transforming crucible. Yet he learns nothing. And he changes little _ alienated from the world’s horrors at the beginning of the film, resigned to them at the end.

This is not a figure on which to hang an epic.

There are other, more colorful figures around the edges. Liam Neeson, who plays the chivalrous Godfrey (like Balian, a real character given a completely fictional life), certainly looks like a knight; the man would look medieval in khakis. And he’s as staunch a hero as we could ask for (“I once fought for two days with an arrow through my testicle,” he growls manfully.) But he disappears early on.

Around for a while longer is Brendan Gleeson, fresh from “Troy,” as the bloodthirsty Reynauld (really, Reginald of Chatillon) and Edward Norton as the gentle, leprous King Baldwin IV. (With marvelous style, the film gives him an entire wardrobe of accessorized silver masks.) As Saladin _ a part that in the bad old days would have gone to Anthony Quinn _ the Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud is compassionate and courageous. But these are supporting players, and they can’t make up for the hollowness of our hero.

Of course, as in any Ridley Scott film, the visuals are stunning. The sword fights are impressive, even with the same cut-and-paste editing that occasionally made “Gladiator” a bit of a blur. The quieter scenes carefully re-create a lush past, full of fogs of incense and mountains of turmeric and goblets of rose-water ice. And Saladin’s siege of Jerusalem is truly amazing, as siege machines lumber forward like terrible dinosaurs and arrows darken the skies like clouds.

What’s unclear, though, is the single narrative that a sprawling story like this needs.

It’s understandable what attracted Scott to the Crusades (and why the film has already been cautiously praised by the Council on American-Islamic Relations). We can imagine why its tale of bloodshed horrified him, and why he feels the need to retell that story now. What remains less obvious, though, is what any of it means to Balian _ or what he, in turn, should mean to us.

(Rated R. The film includes some brutal violence and gore.)

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FILM CLIP:

“KINGDOM OF HEAVEN” A bloody, beautifully mounted story of the Crusader era that takes a novel twist for Hollywood epics: In this telling, it’s the knights who are the extremists, the Muslims who preach tolerance and peace. The angle is fresh (and, according to many historians of the era, accurate). But Orlando Bloom’s blacksmith-turned-knight never comes alive as a hero, and the audience is forced to turn to the fine supporting cast _ including Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson and Edward Norton _ for their drama. Full of action but overlong, its power dissipates by the end. The film contains brutal violence. Rated R. Running time: 145 minutes. TWO AND A HALF STARS

MO/PH END WHITTY

(Stephen Whitty is film critic for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for photos from the film to accompany this story. A version of this story moved on Newhouse News Service.