Quotes of the Day

Two worthy adversaries — Balian (Orlando Bloom), leader of the crusading Christian army, and Saladin the Muslim (Ghassan Massoud) — meet to discuss what they're fighting over. "What is Jerusalem worth?" asks Balian. "Nothing," Saladin replies, then pauses and adds, "Everything." He means that as real estate the city is negligible. As a symbol in a religious war, though, Jerusalem is priceless.

The apparent contradiction in that exchange is at the heart of Kingdom of Heaven, the fascinating new Ridley Scott epic now showing across Europe. The film, written by novelist William Monahan, is constantly posing thorny questions on the nature of military goals and religious belief. It raises these issues for viewers and, crucially, for itself. And it dares to keep juggling all ethical possibilities up to the climax and beyond. Laurence Olivier began his 1948 film of Hamlet with the words "This is the story of a man who could not make up his mind." Kingdom of Heaven gives evidence of filmmakers in a similar quandary.

Their dilemma is this: How do you make an antiwar war movie? To be more precise, how — in the after-math of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and with the dispute over Jerusalem still roiling Israeli-Palestinian tensions — do you create a film that both explains and criticizes Christian Europe's invasion and occupation of Jerusalem almost a millennium ago?

Scott's implicit answer? The way a porcupine makes love: very carefully.

In 1186 Christian knight Godfrey (Liam Neeson, in the role of the stalwart, doomed dad he has nearly patented since The Phantom Menace and Gangs of New York) returns to the Holy Land. He invites his illegitimate son Balian to join the Crusade. Balian signs up and, with a movie hero's swordsmanship and natural nobility, scoots up the ranks and into the arms of Sibylla (Eva Green), sister of the kindly leper King Baldwin (Edward Norton) and restless wife of creepy French guy Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas).

Godfrey's hope is that he and Balian can fashion "a kingdom of conscience, a kingdom of heaven" where "there is peace between Christian and Muslim." Well, one way for peace to come to the region would be for the Christians to leave. That doesn't suit Godfrey and his men. They are soldiers first, samurai for Christ. They have a mission to achieve, and they will do it, by God. But by whose God? The Muslims have one too, and they are ready to fight for him.

All right, let's fight. After all, movies love to move. The spectacle — of armies massing, horses rearing, swords clashing, body parts severed — is at the heart of action cinema. Lives and ideals are put to their greatest risk. And Scott is a magnificent strategist of organized carnage. He proved that in the Gladiator arena and even more impressively with the gritty defensive action that consumed most of Black Hawk Down.

Here again Scott dexterously gets all the plates spinning. He lays out a complex scenario with clarity and power. The battle skirmishes mix sudden violence with slow-motion artistry. The attractive cast can sell an obsession or articulate a conundrum with equal fervor. Green has a classic movie star's beauty and presence, and Bloom has matured splendidly (the beard helps). He gives Balian heft and winsomeness as a pensive man of action.

So what's missing? In movie terms, a rooting interest. In religious terms, a sense of faith. Last year's big Christian film, The Passion of the Christ, teemed with the almost belligerent certainty of Mel Gibson's faith. Balian's faith — and Kingdom's — is a sometime thing: wavering, agonizingly scrupulous about balancing irreconcilable opposites. The final decision — to make war or to chuck it — is a matter not of Christian belief but of a secular conscience. That's because Balian is an emissary to an ancient era from our own. As a 12th century commander, he is obliged to seize the Holy Land for the church and state he serves. But as a representative of early 21st century liberal thinking he has to make a decision that not all will deem heroic.

That makes for an odd war epic. But a movie of two minds is infinitely preferable to a movie with none.

• RICHARD CORLISS
• Ridley Scott's ambitious Kingdom of Heaven tries to make a judicious action epic out of the Crusades