This is the same guy who made “The Duellists”?

Here is one quick critical comment concerning Ridley Scott ´s new film “Kingdom of Heaven” : In an interview that ran in the English-language newspaper Buenos Aires Herald , Eva Green , who plays the queen Sibylla – and love interest for Orlando Bloom’s character Balian – said that she understood why director Scott cut out so much of her character’s story: Movies are always about men, she said.

Scott disagreed, saying that he cut some 45 minutes out of his film, paring it down to the final 140-minute-plus running time, because “tighter is always better.”

Hate to disagree, but this time the talent was right. Nothing may have saved “Kingdom of Heaven” from being the continuation of second-rate historical/mythical epics such as “Troy” or “Alexander.” But a little less pacing that felt like a kindergartener’s attention span might have made the film a bit easier to sit through.

That and fewer impossibly overwrought lines such as, “The world will decide. The world will always decide.” Even in Spanish subtitles that sounds woefully overinflated.