Starring: Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Liam Neeson

9 out of 10: Kingdom of Heaven may be director Ridley Scott's crowning achievement. Since the man is responsible for Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, and Thelma and Louise that's saying a lot. It is a gorgeous film, a well-meaning film, a vast, bursting-at-the-seams-trying-to-convey-big-messages film.

But, like Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," when it came out, the allegories may be too apparent, too facile, too spot-on for current consumption. Perhaps only with the passage of years can a film served on this broad of a plate be seen as a repast instead of an example of excessive cooking.

Never one for subtlety Scott actually has one of his big messages notched into a beam in the blacksmith's shop of his protagonist, Balian. It says "What man is a man who does not make the world better?" This is the 12th century version of those inspirational management posters (the ones with big block letters that say LEADERSHIP or COURAGE) but it's a theme for Scott. One of the others is theological, dealing with God's divine intent. In fact the phrase "God's will" must be the most repeated phrase in Kingdom of Heaven; Scott is making a BIG movie.

What he needed was a big man, not necessarily in stature but one in presence. And Orlando Bloom, Lord love him, is not that man. Though I was impressed by the young actor's quiet and determined performance I was not mesmerized. When a lead has to hold the screen with a silent role in a film of this magnitude, think Peter O'Toole, Clint Eastwood, or Russell Crowe a big, prowling cat has to be lurking behind that visage. Bloom is more like a stately deer; regal in bearing, a little skittish, and with those big damn eyes that evoke sympathy more than fear.

It is 1184 and there is a lot to fear in the world. The Crusades have been going on for over a hundred years and Jerusalem is a city in the control of the Christians. Balian (Bloom) is a blacksmith in France but when his father arrives (Liam Neeson), begging forgiveness for making him a bastard, he's told that in Jerusalem his fortunes can change. Balian has just killed a priest (Scott has little use for pious man of the church in this film) and he's lost his wife to suicide so he joins up with his father, a knight who made his name and fortune in the Crusades.

After a brutal skirmish with the local French law enforcement, none too keen on priest-dispatching, Balian sets out for the Holy Land. Sailing from Messina the blacksmith learns new ways of defending himself, gets in a shipwreck, frees a stallion, fights a whirling dervish of an Arabian opponent and is taken into the confidence of a leper king who wears a silver mask.

It must be said that the first act of Kingdom of Heaven is breathtaking and terrific; it could stand on its own as the best of Ridley Scott's work. He has brought to violent life a world that other filmmakers have only tried to resuscitate. His Middle Age is the one that we dreamed of; a boy's Middle Age, the painter N.C. Wyeth's Middle Age, William Turner's Middle Age. He's helped there by screenwriter William Monahan (his first big project), cinematographer John Mathieson, the costumers, prop department, and countless others. But what must be pointed out is the incredible work done by the special effects company, The Moving Picture Company. Their dark palette, their seamless, painterly style lends a timeless fantastic element to Kingdom that allows Scott entry into a world of allegory and myth.

Monahan and Scott use Jerusalem as the centerpiece of this allegory, the seat of mankind's woes and struggles, the incarnation of man's spiritual battleground.

Balian finds himself a pawn in the struggles of Tiberias (Jeremy Irons, not really sure why he took this role) and King Baldwin (Edward Norton, completely able to convey a sense of nobility in his character) the young, great king of the city who is grossly disfigured by leprosy. They maintain a fragile truce with the Muslim Saladin (Gassan Massoud), who lives outside the confines of the city and who leads a magnificent army that thirsts to have their holy city back in their control. Inside their walls Tiberias and Baldwin have other problems; mostly dealing with the Knights Templar, led by Reynald (Brendan Gleeson) and the power-mad Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas, assaying another of Scott's great villains). Guy is married to Sibylla, (played by Eva Green, again, not my choice for this role), who lusts for Balian, but also for a certain power, all centering, again, around the control of Jerusalem.

When Scott makes this inevitable transition, away from the tale of the pilgrim's progress to the more mundane, less lyrical necessities of life imposing on one's spiritual journey (politics, love), the film, by necessity as well, gets caught in its snares. The majestic panorama of life is replaced by the practical aspects of soldiering, back-room negotiations, primary defense, and city fortification. As it has in so many lesser films before it, the battle scenes in the third act weigh the film down. Though at times magnificent, they are like a suit of armor on this physically beautiful beast of a film. They also lead to what I imagine is for Scott the most important scene in the film, a moment where the defenders of Jerusalem and the armies of Saladin clash in a break in the wall of the city. Neither side moves forward, there is no progress, just an awareness of complete chaos, destruction, and stasis.

I've heard some good friends describe Kingdom of Heaven as a complete bore, which surprises me. How can a film be boring when it is so ambitious, so wonderfully wrought and so striking? I think they found Scott's signs on the road to this Heaven too obvious, too broad, advancing to moments like the scene at the Jerusalem wall, which was again, too spot on. I don't mind them any more than I minded them in Melville's "Moby Dick," which was condemned, in its time, for its lack of subtlety and its blatant sense of purpose.