I saw the movie recently, and I enjoyed it for its entertainment value. But it was historically challenged, to say the least.
These revisionist films always tend to portray the Catholic monks as pretentious, cowardly and distrustful. In truth they were honest, courageous and faithful men who deeply believed in Christ.
As you can see from my name, I've read a great deal about the Crusades, and the reason why they ultimately failed was never due to lack of courage and conviction, but essentially due to the severe inability to resupply the forward armies with food, arms and replacements. The supply routes and logistics were extremely difficult back then, nearly impossible to re-supply the forward armies without suffering crushing losses and casualties along the way.
What really struck me as revisionist history in this movie was the lack of Christian faith the film's 'Crusaders' displayed, and complete selfishness of their leaders. Though personal gain was a part of their leading the Crusades, it's important to note that, according to the great historian Hilaire Belloc, roughly 500,000 Crusaders and their civilian auxiliaries left Europe on the first Crusade, and most of them died from enemy attack, starvation, dehydration and disease. Only about 15,000 of the original 1/2 million crusaders survived to make it to Jerusalem, where this decimated, exhausted army of Christians conquered and ousted the Muslims and took the Holy City. Now THAT'S something more than just 'personal gain', they were traveling, surviving and fighting on the fuel of their Christian faith. The movie was a mockery of how things actually were.
self ping
It was challenging in more ways than one. Muddy plot, bad acting, and painfully awful dialogue. The battle scenes were entertaining enough, though even there I found myself suspicious of elements.
I was entertained (caveat: it's been many months since I've been to a movie), but I'd not bother watching it again.