Tobias Henriksen It seems to me that very few who reviewed this movie has actually read any of the books. That's alright, it only means that you were less disappointed than me. I personally hold Jan Guiliou as my favorite writer, an because the Arn series was the first of his books i ever reed, it has been a standard i compare his work with. The book series is the most amazing books i've ever reed. The characters and plot really sticks out as interesting for someone who are more interested in history than the common man. This is why i had great expectations for the movie, and was overly filled with joy when i heard they were making it.I'm sure my review has hinted that i wasn't satisfied with what i saw, and this is correct. I'm not going to complain about the actors and locations, which in some choices wasn't remotely comparable to the books, what i however want to complain about is the extreme liberty the director has taken in changing so much of the original plot, that i couldn't recognize the original book i loved so much.First off, Who makes 2 movies out of 3 books ?, they couldn't possibly have thought that was a good idea. The first movie is "The road to Jerusalem" and 15 minutes of "The knights templar" i felt empty and disappointed when i left the movie theater that evening.Another thing is that the films are just a love story. Guiliou's original books was a story of life in Sweden during the middle ages, where the love story between Arn and Cecilia was the red thread that combined the books. In the movie this is the main plot, the secondary plot, and the rest of the story is left for scraps.My recommendation is that instead of watching the movie, you read the books. They are more entertaining, and you won't feel that you just wasted part of you're life.

Catharina_Sweden I think it is such a pity that the producers put so much work and money into this - news from the production and all its troubles was a serial story in the Swedish newspapers for several years. And then they chose so bad actors! Especially the main actor - Joakim Nätterqvist - is a disaster! A movie like this is totally dependent on its main actor being handsome, shining, interesting, admirable, lovable... and Nätterqvist is none of it. I cannot understand why he was chosen in the first place! Sofia Helin, as his love interest, is beautiful enough - but that is _all_ she is...The dialog is stultified, and the attempts to make the language more medieval are simply ridiculous. Almost all the actors are stiff and take themselves very seriously, and nothing feels natural. It is not possible to forget that it is actors one is watching, and to lose oneself in the story...Or maybe there simply were no better actors to chose from, either..? Although I am Swedish myself, I must admit that our actors at present are _very_ bad. The really great ones - those who had great beauty and that mystical star quality - for example Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Gösta Ekman senior, Georg Rydeberg, and Lars Hanson - are all dead long ago. And those who were fairly good - such as Anita Ekberg, Emy Storm, Jan Malmsjö, and Thommy Berggren - are old people now.The only movies that today's Swedish actors can act in, are comedies in which they simply play themselves. Such as the movies by Måns Herngren and Hannes Holm, that make fun of contemporary Swedish society, and also a few TV movies for children.With all this said, I must admit I was never over-impressed by the original Arn novels by Guillou, either. They are good enough as light entertainment, but they do not even come close to many other novels that take place in medieval times, for example "Kristin Lavransdottir". So even with the best of actors, it would have been impossible to make a great movie or TV series out of the books.Still, I think the Arn movies are good enough for watching on TV or on your computer, as simple entertainment, if you can get them for free. There is some epic scenery, elaborate clothes and armor, etc., that are beautiful to look at. A cinema ticket would be money wasted, though.

dbdumonteil Sometimes I wonder whether the writer (and the screenwriters) did not want to tell us that in the Middle Ages at least,Muslims were more tolerant, chivalrous ,human and clever -the Europeans could eat their heart out as far as maths,medicine ,architecture and astronomy were concerned-than the believers of the"true" cross.Mother superior (played by Bergmanian Bibi Andersson I did not even recognize)is actually more sadistic and more dreadful than Saladdin and his warriors.It's never boring but it's never really exciting as well;as an user points out,it never peaks although there's a good chemistry between the two principals -who anyway do not share many scenes-The ending may seem original till you realize it is actually borrowed from Anthony Mann 's "El Cid" (1963).We were told the authors had a mini-series in mind and I'm sure it would have worked better that way.But you could do worse than rent this epic story which keeps you interested till the end ,in spite of a certain monotony.

tonstant viewer Gosh, things were clean in 1100! Here I thought people were living in a certain degree of squalor, and now we find out they were all as perfectly spotless as fashion models.The landscapes and cinematography are pretty. Some of the character actors, notably Skarsgard and Callow, are effective. But most are wooden megaphones for not-terribly-good dialog. The Cecilia enjoys her own acting entirely too much, and the Arn looks constipated most of the time, as if he didn't want to soil his costume.The film's handling of time and space, flashbacks and intercutting among various plot lines, was simply incompetent. The opening narration was out of a Bronston epic, which worked well in "King of Kings," "55 Days at Peking" and "El Cid" but not here.For all the money and ambition involved, this film was strangely muted and small, as if being boring was a virtue. Hollywood pictures, for all their faults, try not to be as spineless as this one. Here the size of their budget apparently frightened them. This picture goes on for hours muttering softly to itself, while the subject matter cries out for occasional therapeutic yelling.I haven't read the books by Guillou, a psychotic anti-Semite who drank himself to death. He doesn't sell outside Sweden, which is probably a good thing. But the plot as presented here was cliché'd and predictable every step of the way, with the dreary superficiality of an airplane paperback. This film does not make me curious to explore any further.Rent "El Cid."