Timothy M. Renick chairs the department of religious studies at Georgia State University. He is the author of AQUINAS FOR ARMCHAIR THEOLOGIANS (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002):

Thousands of medieval Christians answer the spiritual call of the pope, take up arms, and travel to the Holy Land to defend the faith against a barbaric and militaristic Muslim foe. The war is bloody and, over time, Jerusalem is won and then lost again, but the spread of Islam into Christendom is halted. We all know the story of the Crusades. Or do we?

In Ridley Scott's epic new film, we not only see the overturning of the 12th-century Christian rule of Jerusalem but also the reversal of centuries worth of popular portrayals of the Crusades. In the screenplay by novelist William Monahan, the great Muslim military leader Saladin is articulate and circumspect. Christian hero Balian is ruled by a secular conscience rather than by religious convictions. Christians are at times duplicitous and faithless, and Muslims are at times noble and godly.

Set amid the events surrounding the Muslim siege of Jerusalem in the 1180s, the film tells the story of Balian (Orlando Bloom, best known for his role in the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy), humble blacksmith and illegitimate son of Christian knight Godfrey (Liam Neeson). Unlike the Templars and their leader (Brendan Gleeson) who are depicted as seeking confrontation with the Muslims at every turn, Godfrey envisions establishing a "kingdom of heaven" in the Holy Land -- a place where peace will reign between Christians and Muslims. Balian is knighted and eventually finds himself chief defender of the city of Jerusalem, pitted against the masterful Muslim military leader Saladin (Syrian film actor Ghasson Massoud). The picture's last third is devoted to the gripping and bloody siege of Jerusalem, replete with the proverbial armies of thousands, fiery night scenes, intricate strategies, and the director's patented cinematography. (Indeed, nothing in Scott's Oscar-winning GLADIATOR matches the sheer volume and devastation of these epically staged battle scenes.)

Does the film get the Crusades "right"? It depends on who you ask. Amid a political context shaped by the divisive war in Iraq, a movie that revisits the most historically significant invasion of Islamic territory by Western military forces cannot help but be controversial. In the case of KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, the reactions have been, quite literally, all over the map. The filmmakers reportedly received death threats from Islamic extremists as the movie shot on location in Morocco. Cambridge University scholar Jonathan Riley-Smith has allegedly chastised the film's script as "Osama bin Laden's version of history." And while the Council on American-Islamic Relations has called KINGDOM OF HEAVEN "a balanced and positive depiction of Islamic culture during the Crusades," UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl has asserted, "There is no doubt in my mind people are going to come out of this movie disliking Muslims and Arabs more than they already dislike them."

The conflicting reactions may, in a strange way, be testimony to the film's even-handed portrayal of the time period. The Crusades remain a controversial phenomenon, even to scholars. Were the Crusades a warranted reaction by Christians to the rapid spread of Islam, or were they a barbaric invasion by Europeans of lands that had been in Muslim hands for centuries?

In recent decades, scholars of the Crusades have become increasingly sensitive to the fact that there is a Muslim side to the story that contradicts the depictions handed down by much of Christian history. At the outset of the Crusades, Muslims were not waging war against Christianity. Syrian Muslims, among the first to be attacked by crusaders, thought they were being subjected to yet another incursion by Byzantines. Upon realizing that their foes came from Western Europe rather than Byzantium, the Muslims referred to their attackers as "Franks," not "crusaders" or "Christians." Muslims were not uncultured barbarians. Medieval Islam supported some of the greatest libraries of the day, preserving writings of Aristotle that had long been banned, even destroyed, in Christendom. Muslim minds were producing sublime works of architecture and making novel philosophical, mathematical, and astronomical discoveries that, by some measures, outpaced those of medieval Europe. The crusading Christians, while at times motivated by deep religious conviction, were often opportunistic. They were commonly illiterate, they at times committed incredible acts of cruelty, but then again, so did their Muslim foes.