Arn: The Knight Templar

I must admit I am pleasantly surprised by this project. The scope of the story and the cinematic achievement were quite good. It's true, the story had some holes, big holes in it, but considering the time of the story it covered and the multitude of sub-plots I think they made quite a good job at it. Take into account that the story starts somewhere in rural Gothland, a kingdom before the formation of Sweden, then stretches for many years.. and distance, all the way to the Holy Land and the fall of Jerusalem. It is a story about the coming of age of a true knight, his unfortunate love story, sibling betrayal and it's consequences, military rivalry among those who should be united and an unexpected friendship with an honorable enemy. I was also pleased with some of the acting (good on the part of Joakim Nätterqvist, good enough for Sofia Helin) although I cannot understand the choice of an actress that looks much older than her characters' love interest. But the fight scenes where decent enough, the battles were made to look quite realistic, even though you can tell there probably weren't enough money for lots of extras to have. What I did not like at all was how much religion was added, but, I guess it all adds to the flavor of the times, supposedly. All in all, a movie I would recommend for anyone who likes historical films and.. Swedish cinema.

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 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

Once I heard about this movie I felt pride for my country for making such a big production, hoping for it to be able to challenge big productions such as Troy, King Arthur and maybe even 300. I hoped so, but I expected otherwise. I know my epic movies pretty well, and in the trailer some months before release I notices some bass tones of the music score were identical to a part of the Gladiator music. I feared a cheap American epic movie ripoff with flawed actors and fake-looking special effects. Luckily, I did not see what I expected.

Arn has one big difference from the epic movies we know - it is made in a country where an epic movie of this size has never been made before. Naturally, many will expect to see the same of what we've seen in epic movies so far. Many will expect to see a hero or a group of heroes slaughtering hordes of enemies for the pure obsession of it that they call glory, but they won't. What they will see is the tale of the medieval life told in the most simple way. A mother promising away her son to God to serve him. The obsession of power between kings. To get to know your worst enemy and respect him as a man, and to meet anguish of having to kill him on the battle field without really knowing why.

During the first half of the movie at some point the storytelling got a little over hand, which is understandable while the balancing between being informative and entertaining is a hard thing to perfect. Though, it would be a shame going to the theater to see this film waiting for the heads to start rolling to the right and to the left, missing out the whole experience of having an honest story about the medieval life being told right in front of your eyes by common people.

This is the first part of the story of Arn. Now I have my hopes up for the second movie to round up this tale as well as or better than this first part started it.

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