Movie Review

Move over Hollywood, because the Swedes make great movies! If you liked the medieval action film, "Kingdom of Heaven", you will love "Arn, The Knight Templar". It was released in Sweden as a series running about 4 1/2 total hours. It was edited down to 2 hours and released in America. Nobody saw it. I never heard of it until I recently came across a copy of the complete series - in Swedish with English subtitles! The movie is so great the boys and I weren't phased at all by the language barrier - we just kept clicking on the next episode to see what was going to happen to Arn and company. Yes, there are battle scenes and some blood, but also an incredible love story, faith in God, honor, hard trials and redemption. You get a dose of history, both the well known Crusader vs Saladin stuff you hopefully learned during school, as well as learning about unknown medieval Sweden. Hollywood prefers England & France with Robin Hood, Prince John, King Richard or King Louis, etc. The only old history Hollywood tells us about Scandinavia is Vikings (I own most of the Viking movies!). This movie has a great cast, plot, costumes, script, props, action, heroes, villains, and it was filmed in beautiful Sweden and sandy Morocco, with a few shots in Scotland. One of Sweden's biggest budget movies ever, and I am just finding out about it! We got rid of TV in our house about 8 years ago, so I do occasionally miss a few important things going on in the world...hey, have our astronauts returned from the moon yet?