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In 2005 a movie by Ridley Scott promised us an epic story to rival "Gladiator", this time set during the crusades.

Instead us poor moviegoer ended up being served a movie that seemed to have no plot, characters with no stories and lots of gore in the brutal melee of medieval warfare.

Turns out that in the end it wasn't a bad movie, in fact, as the director's cut proves, Kingdom of Heaven is indeed one of the best movies of the decade. The entire shitshow we witnessed on the big screen was nothing more than the studio being unhappy with the whopping 189 minutes of running time and axing it to a much more manageable 145.

The movie is the story of Balian (Orlando Bloom), a french blacksmith and bastard son of the count of Iblin (Liam Neeson) on a quest to redeem his dead wife from hell that eventually sees him fall in love with the queen of the kingdom of Jerusalem (Eva Green) and in the end, like a summer blockbuster should, gives us a happy ending.

The 44 minutes that were cut from the movie turned out to be the what made the movie great, as we can finally sense the real motives for the character's actions and the entire movie shifts from being a mindless bloodbath to what is, in my modest opinion, one of the finest movies in it's approach to religious matters.

Given exactly how much screen time was added, i really can't tell you everything, but the plot holes, questionable scenes and empty characters are no longer there.

As a whole, the little details that changed through the entirety of the running time now actually make the world believable, alive and all that more real.

As the late Rogert Ebert said when reviewing this director's cut said: "There is no spoken dialogue that doesn't come from a character that doesn't deserve his own movie".

If you were disappointed by the theatrical release, i would highly recommend you watch it.

If you weren't disappointed, i would still highly recommend you watch it, as it's quite possibly Ridley Scott's best work.

And if you've never seen it, do yourself a favour and watch what is possibly one of the most underrated and unknown movies to ever be released.