First of all Jan Guillou is a fantastic writer. But even so, I have not read his "Arn"-series books. As I have great love and respect for Guillou, I had high expectations for this movie. Also, a good friend of mine (student in university reading history) had read and recommended this book strongly. Perhaps the director couldn't catch the atmosphere in the book, because the movie was a huge disappointment. So I will go very hard on this MOVIE and not on the book so please make the difference.<br /><br />Arn , movie, tells us the tale of Arn, born in 1150, in the north of Europe, in what would later become today's Sweden. The movie is basically separated in three parts; (1) Rise of Sweden, meaning the rivals and fights for land and kingdom, (2) Arns own tale, (3) a romantic. I don't want to tell more than that about the movie, but now on the trailers you see a lot of wars in Jerusalem, but that is only very short time of this 2.31 hour long movie .<br /><br />ACTING/LINES The actors were way too aware of that this was a Swedish blockbuster, and when they played their rolls, one could see an All to relaxed (not living into their characters) actors. Acting was so poor, I sometimes wondered; if this WAS a middle age movie. They were saying their lines as a person living in Stockholm would do in 2007, which was just really lame, there was no attempt to change the accent I believe, made the quality poor. In some parts, they didn't even use old Swedish words! I mean I can't believe that the Swedish language/accent hasn't change since 1150-2007 The lines was empty and when the accents was so poor, this equaled in very low performance, and I sometimes felt that I was watching Swedish Big Brother I think this is because Swedish actors has not yet understood that acting is with whole body, eye moves, body-language, etc, not just standing there like a jukebox and saying your lines one after other. The kids acting was horrible, I was dying every time they said their empty lines, with no feeling, just saying it as instructed! I mean, compare little girl Briony Tallis in Atonement, her majestic way of acting, taking the crowd, filling up the scenes whether to make us like her, hate her, moving us from different moods by her acting, those well-formed lines she so realistically with so much emotions said. If you find her too old for comparative purpose, then one could compare to Jake Lloyd, little Anakin skywalker (SW E1). In Arn, those kids didn't even have many scenes to play and most of their scenes where just the same, and lines so easy compared to Jakes, whom was the one character we've waited for since 1977! The only good actors in Arn was the old nun, Mother Rikissa, she was "good" but not Perfect as the actors should have been in this movie! Also Saladin, Father Henry, Brother Guilbert, and the Bishop passed, all other sucked so bad I was about to leave the cinema and take a rape-shower. Worst acting I found, Cecilia Algottsdotter (and her sister in the movie), I have no words. Arn himself is right behind They could simply not let us feel those really important scenes of creating a character, make us love, hate, or mystic feelings.<br /><br />CUTTING/CAMERA (story telling) What were those stupid layering other scenes about (picture over picture)!? I mean, when you're supposed to create a flashback, you want to do it good, like "I am Legend". Even the TV-series LOST makes better and more intense flashbacks. And most times this layering of flags etc just explains the movie watcher as Stupid! I mean in one scene, Mother Rikissa says "we are Sverkar" and BAM a layer over her face with their flag, what is the meaning?! Who made that on Photoshop?! I will come to that later! The cutting was poor, a lot of scenes didn't make sense at all, we were pushed all too suddenly from one place to another and we didn't even get an explanation why Arns riding (I even heard this guy is actually good at riding) was really bad, the horse was so beautiful and powerful, but Arns carriage/attitude made it look so STUPID, I mean a cool horse riding scenes have we all seen, is it so hard?! In Elizabeth the golden age, when they ride their horses, one catches that freedom, speed, carriage/attitude I am talking about. "Let them come with armies of hell! They shall not pass!" Elizabeth shouts with furious anger! Cool quotes as these can also be found (in Elizabeth  not Arn! Not one single line is memorable quote!) I didn't even like Elizabeth the golden age! <br /><br />ATMOSPHERE/MUSIC Now, some movies have characteristic music, Godfather, Star Wars, Lord of the rings, every movie you read now you've heard the music and felt that atmosphere within you, didn't you? Forget that on Arn. The music is really poor, no atmosphere at all, no tension or bravery  there is nothing. And I mean, this is the type of movie where you could create amazing music to create different moods! <br /><br />ENVIRONMENT Well, This was the only positive part of the movie, beautiful places, great houses, roads, weapons and clothes, all that was really good.<br /><br />So my conclusion is. They have tried to push three books in one movie and therefore the cutting, building up characters, story, conflicts and lines has failed brutally. After watching this movie you will see: bad actors, no good lines, extremely bad cutting (read Bad story telling) and no good music. Simply no atmosphere, no creation of different moods etc and isn't that what a movie is suppose to do? I rate Arn 1 Awful. "Kingdom of Heaven" still is winner in this genre.