Denver, Colo., May 9, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Billed as what was to be one of the summer’s major blockbusters, Ridley Scott’s new big-dollar action film, Kingdom of Heaven, is, at best, drawing mixed reviews from film critics.
Francis X. Maier, a Fellow at the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies and chancellor for the Archdiocese of Denver, likened the movie to “a Monty Python film with big stars, much better production values and no humor.”
He called the film, which follows a young man during the Crusades of the Middle Ages, a “secularist daydream about organized Western religion as the engine of warfare and intolerance, with literally every priest and bishop (except maybe one) a scoundrel, psychotic, thief or coward.”
Maier chided Scott, who directed such films as “Alien”, “Blade Runner” and “Gladiator” for making something that he called “silly and bigoted.”