Arn: Tempelriddaren

This is a movie which is very much like a Hollywood adventure, but in Sweden. This movie could have been really bad if it wasn't for the good acting(Stellan Skarsgård, Bibi Andersson, Michael Nyquist, Gustaf Skarsgård, Sofia Helin and more), the wonderful music and some very good fighting scenes. It's nice too see a Swedish high-budget movie that can be seen by anyone who loves epic tales with good drama. Joakim Nätterqvist is surprisingly good in the leading role as Arn and he will probably become one of Sweden's next big stars. This is a very good movie that i can recommend to anyone who likes adventure, epic, drama and Swedish movies.

Impressive film. i expected purely a crusades film. but it is much more. essentially it is about Arn and his life from childhood to adult. eventually finding his true love but this love is forbidden since he has "sinned with the flesh" as those crazy Christians put it. so he is sent away to the crusades where he encounters Saladin, the oppositions leader. and they come to respect one another as men of honor and wisdom. since this film involved severing of limbs and cutting throats i am puzzled why this film got a pg rating when films like die hard get a 18 rating. the answer is purely because the financial backers of the film had pull with the censorship board. after all this is the most expensive film production in Scandinavian history. cant wait to see the sequel.

I liked this movie because it didn't come from Hollywood. That already earned it several stars in my book. This movie simply tells a tale of the trials of a knight in the Holy Land, and at home. The writer did excellent by not giving the hero modern, biased, progresive views such as were on display by Orlando Bloom in "The Kingdom of Heaven." Hollywood loves to portray Crusaders as bloodthirsty maniacs, and the Muslims as peaceful pious victims. History proves that both sides had both kinds of men. Movies are good when they simply tell it like it was, not like revisionists want us to ee it. I now look for foreign made films on history, especially the crusades. I avoid Hollywood like a dark age plague.

It seems that most reviewers here want sword fights and action.

Arn is more interesting than that: it is a surprisingly complex film about honour and medieval notions of chivalry and values.

We REALLY enjoyed this - the characters are fleshed out and the plot develops at a drama pace, rather than at a dramatic pace. It seems a lot of thought went into the characterization and settings - this did cost $30,000,000 making it the most expensive Swedish film ever - and it did very well at the box office.

Those wanting just action had best look elsewhere those wanting both action and character, and a real exploration of the values of knighthood then this will definitely be your cup of tea and something to savour.

It is kind of like Braveheart in its values, and less like Kingdom of Heaven than you'd expect. Yes, it is quite elegiac, and that fits its Nordic roots well.

Overall, one of the better films about the crusades and the choices made for people living in a time when individual freedom was lost and subjugated to church and kings.

Recommended

I must say this one surprised me, it was better than i thought it would be. Joakim Nätterqvist did an awesome performance, i've met him several times since he's my cousins ex so i know him personally and this just what he needed, might this be a new start for a career for Jocke? who knows.

To the movie now...

When title shows up and the beautiful music is being played in the background i'm getting a good felling about it. But then the narrator starts to talk and i have to say he didn't fit in any good, it was just like watching Animal planet. The narrator didn't fit in at all, in fact some people in the audience actually started to laugh, that's rare.

I've heard that some have said that this is the best Swedish movie ever made. For me that's not true, i say that Evil is the best Swedish film. But Arn is just what we in Sweden needed. For all the shitty movies that have been made this was a lift. Perhaps now Sweden will be marked on the map again in film making. Since Bergman died it has been rough for us to get attention in movie making. So i hope Arn goes internationally, due to the fact that they speak more English than Swedish.

But when i've heard from Joakim Nätterqvist that they were gonna re-cut the movie to suit a more younger audience i was a bit worried, i didn't want it to be an Astrid Lindgren movie. But it didn't turn out that way, some parts were actually pretty violent and contained some gore. I've seen worse though but that's something i would like to warn all the sensitive audience's for.

The music for the movie was perfect in my opinion, i don't know who wrote it but my hat goes of for that person.

Arn Tempelriddaren- "Turned out to be surprisingly good!" 8/10