Kingdom of Heaven 🎥 2005 Movie Info

Plot Summary

In Medieval France, Crusaders visit the village of Balian, a blacksmith haunted by his wife’s recent suicide after a miscarriage. Their leader introduces himself as Balian’s father, Baron Godfrey, and asks him to return with him to the Holy Land, but Balian declines. Later that night, Balian kills his half-brother, the greedy and immoral town priest, after discovering that he ordered Balian’s wife’s body beheaded before burial and stole her crucifix, while torching his smithy in the process. The next day, Balian joins his father’s group, hoping to gain salvation for himself and his wife in Jerusalem.

They are soon confronted by soldiers led by Godfrey’s nephew sent to arrest Balian, during which many are killed on both sides, and an arrow strikes Godfrey. Reaching Messina, they have a contentious encounter with Guy de Lusignan, a prospective future king of Jerusalem who intends to break the fragile treaty between the Crusader states and Sultan Saladin with help from the brutal anti-Muslim Templar Knights. A night before the departure, Godfrey knights Balian, anoints him the new Baron of Ibelin and orders him to protect the helpless before dying of his arrow wound. Balian sails for the Holy Land, but his ship runs aground in a storm, leaving him the lone survivor. Balian journeys the desert toward Jerusalem, recovers a horse which survived the shipwreck, and fights a Muslim cavalier over the horse.

Balian slays the cavalier but spares his slave, who guides him to Jerusalem. Arriving in the city, Balian frees the slave, who tells him his mercy will earn the respect of the Saracens. Balian meets Jerusalem’s leaders: the leper King Baldwin IV; Tiberias, the Marshal of Jerusalem, who informs him that Saladin has forgiven the death of the cavalier; and the King’s sister Princess Sibylla, Guy’s wife and mother to a boy from an earlier marriage. Balian travels to his inherited estate at Ibelin and uses his knowledge in engineering to help the struggling residents irrigate the land.

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