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[Mejilan]

how so?

Spoilers abound. Don't read if you haven't seen the movie yet.

The entire movie was a plodding mess. The battles SUCKED, and we were robbed of at least 2 decent battle opportunities, that I can recall. Aside from Jeremy Irons and the dude who played Hamish in Braveheart, the Christian cast's acting ranged anywhere from bad to atrocious (particularly Bloom and whoever played the Princess, both were like robots.) The

Spoiler

(first)

King, on the other hand, was pretty good. The Arab actors definitely stole the show. The "servant" and especially whoever played Saladin. They were amazing. Problem was, some of their performance was destroyed when they were forced to do their lines in English. I can totally understand them using English when dealing with the Christians, but I DIDN'T need mangled English within their own internal councils as well. Should have been in Arabic and subtitled, or something. I actually had a somewhat difficult time understanding them on occasion, and I lived in Israel for four years and had no problems interacting with Arabs speaking English (on an ESL level) with me. Don't know what was up.

On a more fundamental level, the story and characters mostly sucked. In particular I felt NOTHING for Liam Neeson's character

Spoiler

(who died way too quickly and really didn't get any kind of chance to develop.)

But especially, Bloom's character was terrible.

Spoiler

I mean, 15 minutes in he's murders a freakin' priest.

Great way to endear himself to the audience. He goes from an ignorant peasant blacksmith to a

Spoiler

an educated noble who innately understands politics and brilliant military tactics

in such a relatively short time? Please. His speech delivery and military leader presence towards the end of the flick were just terrible and not-believable.

The movie sucked. I hated it, and was totally predisposed to loving it. G-d, I avoided reviews and criticisms from my friends and saw it pretty much solely on the basis of it being done by Ridley Scott (f-cking LOVE Gladiator). My bad.

 

[mas9055]

Really none of those movies look good to me.

What about Crash? It could be movie of the year in my book.