Interesting movie that brings an unlikely premise to contrive an artificial situation - why do the parents have to make a decision right away just because John has a New York flight in a few hours? The parents also don’t seem to address the couple’s 10 day acquaintance. Nevertheless, the movie is very dramatic with compelling dialogue, greatly timed comedic/awkward moments, and a “musical chairs” scenario where the various characters rotate to have heart-to-hearts with each other.

The race/miscegenation issue doesn’t seem to be treated very well - rather stilted, in fact - but was probably daring when the movie premiered in 1967. Extremely sentimental, can get tiring with lots of slow/boring/contemplative scenes, but wonderful moment when Catherine fires her obnoxious art director! 3.5/5 stars but with little repeat-viewing value.

I just watched a movie called “Kingdom of Heaven” with Patrick. It stars Orlando Bloom in a tale of a young crusader defending Jerusalem from Saladin’s Muslim army.

The cover of the DVD is shown below.

The movie is an over 2 hours long adventure of a blacksmith named Balian (Orlando Bloom) from a small village, who discovers that he is actually the illegitimate son of the Baron of Ibelin. Balian inherits the title of Baron of Ibelin after his father dies and he goes on to defend Jerusalem against Saladin’s Muslim army. Overall, this movie has a lot of large scale medieval combat and metal clashing against metal. Over 1500 Moroccan soldiers were hired as extras!

Unfortunately, this Ridley Scott movie, the same man who directed “Gladiator,” has many historical inaccuracies. The king of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV, was already in an advanced stage of leprosy at that time and would have been almost completely paralyzed.

There is a lot of seat-gripping action in this movie, but it should not be viewed as a historical reference.