Unconvincing crusader

For the anti-war lobby, this new blockbuster from Ridley Scott must seem heaven-sent.

The villain is an evangelical Christian who ignites a war against Islam, only for events to spiral horribly out of control.

The hero is an agnostic who gracefully cedes territory to an Arab leader, so he and the troops can go home.

Who cares that said leader is Saladin, not Saddam, the place 12th-century Jerusalem? This £75million history lesson points to the present. But don't panic if politics is what you're desperate to escape.

Like Gladiator (Scott's last blast from the past), Kingdom Of Heaven provides a rousing spectacle, throbbing with graphic battle sequences and eerie cinematography. Alighting in the Holy Land, crusader Balian (Orlando Bloom) runs into all the reliable archetypes of the sword-and-sandals epic: the dying king (Ed Norton), the scheming traitor (Marton Csokas), the noble adversary (Ghassan Massoud), and beautiful princess (Eva Green). Jerusalem itself, though, is the film's most imposing presence.

Recreated via 21st-century CGI, the sacred city stands as a dusty, delirium dream, one we can all too readily believe contains everything to drive men mad.

If only Scott's human centre was as compelling. Bloom is utterly unconvincing as the film's tortured hero and gets worse as the body count mounts.

Striding through a corpse strewn battle field, he's meant to embody moral anguish. What he actually looks like is a backpacker in an overcrowded airport lounge, plagued by the suspicion that he's left his flipflopsat home. We've had a run of duff epics recently, with Troy and Alexander little more than a showcase for celebrity thighs.

This bloody excavation of the conflict between Christianity and Islam is in a different class, but still proves frustrating.

In trying to make peace between the multiplex and Mohammed, Scott overstretches his forces; just another English hero who came unstuck in the deserts of a land he couldn't hope to understand.

Kingdom Of Heaven
Cert: 15