After conquering Ancient Rome with Gladiator, Ridley Scott no doubt licked his lips at the idea of taking on the middle ages, but he drops it. There's plenty of stunning visuals, and the setting of the crusades makes it interesting, but the story has problems. Mostly in that the story is so fair to Muslims that they really should have been the heroes - these invades coming into their land and acting beastly, killing people, being treacherous, shouldn't have been there in the first place. Saladin is so nice that the big siege at the end is totally pointless. Orlando Bloom should have just surrendered, same result would have happened, more people would have lived.
Orlando isn't an engaging hero - he's buffed up, tries hard, is conscientious... but is still too vanilla. Jeremy Irons, Brendon Gleeson and Liam Neeson are professional but we've seen them in these roles too often (Neeson played a similar role the same year in Batman Begins ditto Gleeson in Troy); Edward Norton however kicks a goal as the leper king, as does Eva Green as his tormented sister.
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