a5c7b9f00b Arn, the son of a high-ranking Swedish nobleman is educated in a monastery and sent to the Holy Landa knight templar to do penance for a forbidden love. Since this is Sweden&#39;s first big movie production you can&#39;t but expect it to have a children&#39;s disease or two, but in my opinion one can&#39;t expect Swedes who haven&#39;t shot anything but over-acted dramas in little cottages in the countryside for what feels like forever to faultlessly execute a desert battle on horseback for example. The step away from traditional movie making in Sweden towards bigger productions raise my grade and the inevitable misses bring it down. The sceneries were beautiful and the props were well made, but it was mostly too clean to lend complete credibility to the setting. Acting was not bad and emotional parts was indeed moving and didn&#39;t feel awkward or silly. On the downside I think one can easily get the feeling that it is indeed two books compressed into one movie, something that not even all the pretty props could compensate for. Finally the ending leaves you pretty much expecting the story to be continued in a second movie. The one main reason why I wanted to see this is mainly because of the caliber of the cast. I enjoyed watching Gustaf Skarsgard, Vincent Perez, Bibi Anderson and Stellan Skarsgard in previous movies. With one or two recommendations I decided to take a look at this.<br/><br/>The movie&#39;s plot (remember this is the 3 hour version) is that Arn is a boy who fell off a tower trying to catch the prince&#39;s crow. His parents pray a deal with God that if he survives to put him in a monastery. He survives and years later he is a monk who is taught to fight by the former Templar Guilbert (Vincent Perez). He soon falls in love with a woman named Cecilla. Soon after that it is revealed she bears his child. Arn and Knut (The rightful ruler of the throne but now isn&#39;t because his father was killed by the current king) go and ambush the King and kill him. Because Cecilla bears Arn&#39;s child and that he killed the king when Arn and Cecilla weren&#39;t married. Cecilla is sentenced to 20 years at a nunnery and Arn is to be sentenced at a monastery, then after that Arn is asked to fight at The Crusades.<br/><br/>Cecilla goes through horrible torment and Arn goes through battle after battle. I&#39;m not really going to go into detail though. After that He returns to his wife and son. Knut is soon on his deathbed and the only way to make peace is to hand over the throne to the son of the former king that Knut decapitated all those years earlier. The only condition that this king has is that Knut&#39;s son Erik is to take the throne after him. Arn asks for a person who he trains to observe The King and his actions towards Erik. The King asks this person to go out to a river and drown all three of Knut&#39;s children. He seems to comply until the last minute and kills the 2 guards observing him, in collateral damage Knut&#39;s youngest son dies. Arn then leads one final battle against the king.<br/><br/>The character development of this is really well done. The pacing of this movie is just right (which is why I will never watch the 2 hour version). The Acting (as I suspected) is great. I would recommend this version to people who have seen the 2 hour version or those who want to see a good movie about the Crusades.
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364 weeks ago