This film has now become the masterpiece I originally hoped for.

A pretty shocking statement, isn’t it? Can an additional fifty minutes truly change the scope, passion, and even message of a film? When in the hands of one of America’s greatest directors, Ridley Scott, and the impassioned screenwriter William Monahan, the answer is a resounding “yes!”

The new 194-minute director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven injects inspiration and new life into this story. The revised Heaven takes us on a complicated journey through faith and doubt, absolution and forgiveness, suggesting that the individual’s cycle through such experiences echoes that of the fallen world at large. It’s a stronger and deeper tale, far distant from the beautiful but feeble film that limped through theaters a year ago. Scott’s film is now closer in tone and style to cinema’s greatest epics—it even includes an introduction, overture, and intermission.

Heaven now serves as a prolonged, unique look at God's will, one which explores why He might use suffering to motivate us (e.g. Bailan's wife's death and his need for forgiveness), both serve and scorn us (e.g. King Baldwin's heroic, but failed attempts to keep Jerusalem in peace), and teach us and redeem us (e.g. Bailan's purpose in Jerusalem and his fateful return with Sibylla to his once-burned down home). In a new,
brief scene at the beginning of the film between a compassionate Bishop and Bailan’s half-brother (the evil priest who buries his wife), the film also raises the question of the compatibility of fanatical adherence to religious law with devotion to a loving Savior, setting up one of Bailan’s own, deepest struggles.

The extended opening of the film provides much more detail about what motivates characters’ actions and their respective views of God’s will. With this and other important additions throughout the film, Bailan's wrestling with God and Christianity in medieval times becomes much more believable, instead of a transparent Hollywood ploy to setup secular humanism as the true answer to his soul’s needs.

Though one of the strongest critiques of the theatrical cut was the lead's performance, Orlando Bloom actually fills in the role of Bailan much better in this extended version; the added scenes help convince us that this character’s soul is truly, deeply wounded. Many will be happy to know that a number of key supporting characters also receive additional screen time, including Edward Norton's King Baldwin IV, the “Leper King” (my favorite character in the theatrical version), and the Knight Hospitaller (played brilliantly by David Thewlis). But the most significant change is the elaboration of the character Sibylla (played by Eva Green) whose odd and contradictory impulses and emotions have become fully realized as those of a nuanced human being; she no longer plays as a mere excuse to place Bloom in a love scene. The subplot involving her son (that’s right—she has a son) also helps add more of an emotional charge to both Baldwin's death and her drastic change in appearance during the battle for Jerusalem.

The added complexity and length of the film also serve the rich plot. The pacing problems which plagued the theatrical cut are cured (for example, you’ll enjoy the more fully realized siege on Jerusalem), so the film no longer seems quite so hurried. There's a painful sense of the human cost to every battle because now we’re given the time to get to know some of the more peripheral characters. This new version of Kingdom of Heaven intrigues the mind and stirs the heart; the film flows seamlessly, now resonating as a complete story.

This film is now worth not only a rental but a purchase. Growing numbers are praising it as a better story than Scott’s Oscar-winning Gladiator (2000). Some may call this blasphemy—I’m no longer one of them. While Heaven does not have the star-making turn of Russell Crowe or quite so many action scenes (though—fair warning—the extended cut is a bit more action-packed and much gorier), its intricacies, questions, and storytelling are far more compelling than Gladiator’s revenge tale.

But you’ll have to see it to believe it.

King Baldwin IV: “When I was sixteen I won a great victory. I felt in that moment that I should live to be one hundred, now I know I shall not see thirty. You see, none of us choose our end really. A king may move a man, a father may claim a son. But remember that, even when those who move you be kings or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God you cannot say ‘but I was told by others to do thus or that ‘virtue was not convenient at the time.’ This will not suffice.”