Don’t bother with hellishly bad ‘Kingdom of Heaven’

If you’re looking for “Kingdom of Heaven” to be an allegory of our current situation in the Middle East, you’ll find that they do in fact have one thing in common: Both the film and the current state of affairs are a bloody mess.

The film stars Orlando Bloom as Balian, a recently widowed blacksmith who is running from the law. He soon meets up with the father he never knew, Godfrey of Ibelin (Liam Neeson). Godfrey is a nobleman on his way back to the Holy Land to get medieval on some Saracen booty. Godfrey tells the young blacksmith that, well … yeah, I raped your mom, but the bright side of it all is that you’re now a noble too. Balian seems to be cool with that and asks Godfrey to teach him some wicked fencing moves. Godfrey gets all Qui-Gon Jin and teaches Balian everything he knows — and then dies.

Balian heads off to Jerusalem, hoping to regain the faith in God that he lost following the death of his wife. He soon finds himself an unwitting player in a game of power and intrigue as the King of Jerusalem (Edward Norton) is dying of leprosy and wants Balian to marry his sister (Eva Green), who is betrothed to war-hungry Knight Templar Reynald (Brendan Gleeson). Balian refuses. Sister marries Christian nutjob, who orders the slaughter of innocent Muslims in order to break the fragile peace between the Christians and the Muslims, led by the stoic and unusually reasonable Saladin (Ghassan Massoud).

Naturally, all hell breaks loose in the Kingdom of Heaven, and Balian is forced into protecting the people of Jerusalem against Saladin’s hordes, which gives director Ridley Scott ample opportunity to overuse the 45-degree shutter, the jerky cam technique made famous by Steven Spielberg in “Saving Private Ryan.” The overuse of that technique, combined with the horrible computer-generated armies makes most of the battle scenes a bore to watch. We’ve seen it done a gajillion times before — and done better.

The acting isn’t that great, either. Orlando Bloom is simply unconvincing as a leader. His speech that is supposed to rally the people and the troops is so loaded with compromise and equivocation, you’d think it was written by Bill Clinton. The only actors who are able to rise above William Monahan’s overly diplomatic (mustn’t upset the Muslims!) dialogue are Jeremy Irons and Ghassan Massoud.

At nearly two and a half hours, “Kingdom of Heaven” is overly long; the watered-down history and politics give us no idea who to root for — or care about; the battle scenes are hackneyed; and the characters (with the exception of Saladin) are all one-dimensional stereotypes.

I honestly can’t recommend “Kingdom of Heaven” to anyone — not even as a rental.

GRADE: D